
<\ 



► IT M 1 



iiNEFITS 
FORGOT 






v: 





ESTIER 

• 




Class 
Book. 



Goipgtit^ . 







COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



BENEFITS FORGOT 




WOLCOTT BALESTIER 

AUTHOR OF 
REFFEY, A COMMON STORY, CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN, ETC. 




W 0K C0 




' ■ // ^ * 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1894 



Copyright, 1893, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



Electrotyped and Printed 

AT THE APPLETON PRESS, U. S. A. 



Freeze, freeze, thou bitter shy, 
That dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot : 
Though thou the waters warp, 
Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remembered not. 

AC' 1 



BENEFITS FOEGOT. 



It was James Deed's wedding-morning, and the town 
knew it. Deed himself was so full of the knowledge of it 
that his face would break from time to time, without his 
will, into a fond and incommunicable smile of happiness 
as he rode along towards Maverick on his horse. His eye 
measured the crisp and sparkling Colorado morning ; and 
he took the sun upon his large, wholesome, likable face, 
with the pleasant feeling that its shining was for him. 
The agreeable world seemed to have him in thought, and 
to be minded to do the handsome thing by his wedding- 
day. And the evil things, the blizzards and sand-storms, 
and the winds that will be howling at all hours in Col- 
orado, shunned the face of this thrice-blessed day. 

The cattle pony which Deed was riding had got the 
news of the kindling morning air, though he lacked word 
of the wedding; but it was enough that he also knew 
what it was to be happy. Deed patted his flank affec- 
tionately, as they swung into town together ; and he was 
of a mind to give good morrow to the herd that came to 
the barbed-wire fence to observe his happiness with im- 
passive eyes. It was too early to see Margaret ; but when 
he had waked at the ranch house on his cattle-range, 



2 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

where he had spent the last few days, he had found it 
impossible to remain quietly within doors, and since he 
must ride, it was the nearest thing to seeing her to ride 
in her direction. 

The curtains were still down at the windows of the 
house where Margaret had been staying with Beatrice 
Vertner for a month. The Vertners occupied the largest 
dwelling in Mayerick except the brick house which 
Snell had built since he had made his strike at Aspen ; 
its architecture was in the journeyman carpenter Queen 
Anne-manner common to Western towns which have 
reached their second stage. The pony, accustomed to stop- 
ping, swerved in towards the gate, and Deed was obliged 
to restrain him, unwillingly. There was no one in sight to 
mind that he should kiss his hand to a certain curtain in 
the second story; but he was obliged to content himself 
with this. He gave the pony the rein, and went swinging 
into Maverick by way of Mesa street. 

His eye roved anxiously, with another thought, as he 
galloped along, over the circle of snow-peaks that separated 
Lone Creek Valley from the world outside, and rested on 
a cleft in the white hills through which his younger son, 
Philip, should at the moment be making his way from 
Pinon on horseback, to be present at the wedding in the 
afternoon. 

Zacatecas Pass, which found its way through this 
breach in the Sangre de Cristo Range, led down, at a point 
thirty miles above Maverick, to the railway by which 
Philip should be taking a train within a few hours. A 
dusty cloud, of which Deed feared he knew the meaning, 
hung above the trail. It seemed probable that it was 
snowing in the mountains. If it was, Philip would almost 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 3 

certainly fail to arrive in time : it was equally certain that 
he would be in danger. 

There had been a thaw, succeeded by freezing weather, 
and the crusted snow clung to the huge mountain shapes 
as if it were moulded on them. 

It was charming to follow the modelling of their mighty 
bulks under the conforming vesture of white, swelling and 
dying away in divine suggestions of hidden grace, with 
the effect of a maiden's raiment. The edged lines by 
which the hills mounted to the summits lay crumpled 
on one another, buried in softness. The snow plumped 
the hollows ; and pursued their climbing sides to the 
most secret fold. The angles were curves, and the curves 
glistering reaches of satin; for at every point the sunlight 
meshed itself in a gleam of white, and the whole field of 
snow shone with a blinding glitter. 

In fact, the polished radiance of the hills gave off a 
glare which the eye could not meet with patience, and 
Deed, withdrawing his glance from the mountains, fixed 
it on the scattered town into which [he was coming. He 
knew every building in it ; he had seen most of them go 
up. He remembered when the general supply-store of 
Maverick had stood — if a tent may be said to stand — where 
the post-office now reared its ugly splendour of brick, stone- 
trimmed and mansard-roofed. In the road over which 
he was riding there was a familiar spot where an embat- 
tled squatter had held his own against the town for a 
twelvemonth, refusing to move the log cabin which he 
had built in the centre of Mesa street before there was a 
Mesa street. Deed had contributed to the building of the 
Episcopal church, past which he was riding at the mo- 
ment; and as he glanced at its roof and front, he was 



4 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

sorry that he had not put aside more profitable business 
long enough to get himself appointed a member of the 
committee on its architecture. He tried to excuse him- 
self by remembering that he had insisted on the simple 
and genuine Gothic interior, carried out in pine, which 
made it a very tolerable little church within. 

He had had nothing to do with the roller skating-rink, 
nor with the Grand Opera House, which depressed the 
observer by its resemblance to Libby Prison, though it 
was an achievement of wood, and clapboarded up to the 
summit of its false front. The ingenuousness of the pre- 
tence with which the false front faces down the spectator 
in the new towns of the West would be almost a thing to 
disarm criticism if the front, in itself, were more beauti- 
ful ; certainly if it were less hideous one would hardly like 
to humiliate it by going around behind and spying out 
the nakedness of the device. 

As Deed's eye ranged over the roofs of the main street 
behind the fronts, he smiled at the disproportion between 
the actual height of the squat buildings and the height 
which the fronts alleged for them. His happiness gave 
an edge to his observation; he saw familiar things as if 
for the first time. On the treeless plain over which 
Maverick was dispersed nothing obstructed the vision for 
miles, and from so slight an elevation as that along which 
Deed was cantering one commanded a panoramic view 
of the entire place. The hotel at the station, the public 
school with its high central tower, the post-office, and the 
railway hospital, were the only structures, besides the 
church, which lifted themselves about the level of the pre- 
vailing one- and two-storied buildings. Except in the main 
street, the dwelling-houses lay isolated from one another 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 5 

in archipelagoes, marking the push of the real-estate 
boom to one and another corner of the young city. 

As Deed came into the business centre of the place, 
distinguished as such by the board sidewalk that went 
loftily along the thoroughfare on each side of the way, by 
the blazonries in red, black, and chrome-yellow on the 
muslin signs tacked upon the fronts of the shops, and by 
the tethered cattle-ponies, burros, and Studebaker waggons 
of the ranchmen who began to come into town, he was 
hailed by a loitering group gathered about a telegraph- 
pole in front of the post-office. 

" Goin' the wrong way round, ain't you, Mayor ? " in- 
quired one of the group. 

Deed had served the unexpired term of a mayor of 
Maverick who had suffered the inconvenience of being 
shot in the early days of the town ; and the usual mili- 
tary titles refusing to fasten themselves readily to a cer- 
tain dignity which the town recognised in him, it had 
compromised upon " Mayor," as being a fortunate com- 
bination of the respectful and the jocular. 

Deed's answering smile owned the impeachment of the 
humorous reference ; but the etiquette of Western chaff is 
not to sanction such an understanding with speech. It is, 
rather, de rigueur to meet such references with a heavenly 
unconsciousness of innocence, and to own them only deep 
within the understanding eye, which admits both parties 
to such amenities into the open secret of the no-secret. 

" Well, yes ; for Aspen and some places up Eagle River 
way I'm going a good ways around, Burke," said Deed, 
with twinkling eyes, as he checked the pony ; " but I'm 
headed right for the telegraph-office, I think, unless I've 
taken my observations wrong." 



6 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

He was giving his pony the rein as some one said, 
" There was some tell about town here, Mr. Mayor, of 
your having asked unanimous consent to make another 
matter a special order of business for to-day." The post- 
master, who had served a term in the legislature, was fond 
of the phrases he had learned at Denver. 

" Yes ; anything we can do for you, you know," dark- 
ly intimated the young fellow on whom the town's repute 
for the possession of the hardest drinker in the county de- 
pended. On Sundays Sandy was the sexton of the Epis- 
copal church; other days he divided between Ira's and 
certain odd jobs. 

" To be sure ; that reminds me — there is something 
you can do for me, Sandy. Ira has my orders. Call on 
him this evening, and take the camp." 

" Make it a dozen, Mayor," wheedled Sandy. 

" Couldn't," responded Deed. " I've made it two." 
He smiled at the group. Sandy guffawed his enjoyment 
of the prospect. The rest coiled their tongues deep in 
their cheeks, shifted the pain of sustaining their bodies 
from one leg to the other, and gazed at the " Mayor " with 
a broad smile. 

" Denver ? " asked some one. 

Deed shook his head. " Y. and Z.'s." 

" Bottles ? " 

« Kegs." 

He surveyed the grinning group with a smile, as he 
caught up the reins. The points at which he differed 
from them were perhaps rather more obvious at the mo- 
ment than those by which he was allied to the life of the 
place and of the West. In spite of eight years spent in 
the West, broken only by occasional visits to his old home 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 7 

in New York, and, while Margaret was still in question, 
by a single visit to Europe, his bearing retained a sort of 
distinction which no measure of consent to a civilization 
that surveys life with its hands in its pockets, and its 
trousers in its boots, was likely to vitiate. 

In being unaggressive, this bearing escaped the con- 
demnation under which all forms of aloofness from the 
common lot properly lie in the West ; and in being on 
humorous terms with itself, it rather commended itself 
than otherwise to a people who must see life as a joke if 
they would escape seeing it as a tragedy. It was far from 
being his manner of distinction that gave Deed his place 
in the regard of Maverick, and of Lone Creek County, of 
course ; and it was scarcely by it that he prevailed in his 
practice before the Supreme Court at Denver, or in his 
fights for mineral claims at Leadville. He counted, as 
every one does in the West who counts at all, by pure 
force. 

Deed liked the West as men like what serves their 
ends, and for something more. There was a kind of ob- 
ligation of gratitude upon him to like it, for it had been 
his rescue from lethargy after the death of his wife in New 
York ten years before. He had had no wish to live when 
he came West, and his friends were surprised to hear after 
six months that he was still alive. He was what is called 
" a very sick man " when he reached Maverick ; and as he 
was also a very miserable one, the chances that he would 
presently be borne to the desolate little graveyard on the 
mesa just outside the limits of Maverick were rather bet- 
ter than the chances of his pulling through to find a new 
strength with his reviving interest in life. In the event 
he not only " came around," as the neighbours said, but, 



8 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

in laying hold upon the practice of his profession again, 
discovered a pleasure in pursuing the application of its 
principles to new conditions. 

He chaffed the West, now, when he met a man who, 
like himself, had once been a New-Yorker or a Bos- 
tonian ; but this was by way of reminding himself to re- 
member how absurd the whole affair was, after all. The 
real fact was, that, absorbed in his work in creating a 
future for his boys, and finally in accumulating the for- 
tune which he had seen might be his one day for the use 
of the needful energy, he had forgotten to philosophize 
the West, as he had been used to do while from his sick- 
bed he lay staring idly on a range of mountains which he 
remembered thinking too big. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, he had cast in his lot with this huge, crudely 
prosperous, blundering, untutored land; and if he had 
still reserves, there was never time left from his mines, his 
cattle, and his law to think of them. 

He was putting spurs to his horse as Snell, the lead- 
ing merchant of the place, who had just joined the group, 
inquired suggestively, " The young men will hardly arrive 
in time for the ceremony, I take it, Mr. Deed?" 

" I don't know, Mr. Snell," said Deed, restraining the 
pony, which was chafing to be off again. " I hope to see 
Philip. He's dropped his mining experiment up at 
Pinon, at my suggestion, and he will get through by the 
two-thirty train, I hope, if he gets over the Pass all right. 
I don't know whether to hope that he has left Laughing 
Valley City or not. I'm just on my way to the telegraph- 
office to inquire." He cast a doubtful look towards Zaca- 
tecas Pass. 

" Looks some like snow up around the Pass," com- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 9 

mented one of those young men of middle age who, in 
the West, somehow keep the sap of youth jogging lustily 
in their veins at an age when it has dried out, or soaked 
down into the roots, of New England men. It is possible 
that the speculative fancy of man does not engender a 
new scheme with every moon for nothing. 

" It does look like snow," owned Deed, as he glanced 
anxiously again towards the mountains ; and some one 
ventured to ask him about Jasper. " He was detained by 
business in New York," he said, at which Snell exchanged 
a significant glance with his neighbour. He hardly ex- 
pected him for the wedding, Deed added. It was pretty 
well known in Maverick that Jasper wasted no approval 
on his father's second marriage ; and there were persons 
who saw dubious things beneath the peremptory summons 
which he had given out a fortnight ago as calling him to 
New York. 

As Deed, to cut short the embarrassment of this line 
of questioning, definitively caught up the reins, and gave 
the pony a cut with the quirt, the group gathered about 
him lifted their sombreros, or such rakish or merely 
slovenly caps as they wore, and swung them about their 
heads in the burlesque by which Western manners express 
their condescension to the customs of a superseded civil- 
ization. It was not a bow, nor precisely a ceremony of 
farewell, but a mixed expression of thanks for the " irri- 
gation " to be offered at Ira's in the evening, and of an 
embarrassed sentiment of congratulation on the event of 
the day, which did not quite know the smartest way of 
conveying itself. 

When some one inquired, "What's the matter with 
James Deed, Esquire ? " and the crowd gave the f oreor- 



10 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

dained answer with a single voice, they had really done 
for him all that one sovereign can do for another in the 
way of expression of good will : it was frankincense and 
myrrh, and oil and wine and precious stones, offered him 
on a tray of gold, if you like. It was meant for the same 
thing, and Deed did not like it less. He turned in his 
saddle, and waved his own wide-brimmed hat to them in 
acknowledgment, his fine smile on his lips. 

The Colorado sunshine was flooding the room in 
which Margaret awaited his coming, without let from 
blinds or shades. She stood in the big patch of radiance 
flung upon a rag carpet past fear of fading, and looked 
wistfully out of the window. The house stood a little 
apart, at the head of Mesa street, the chief thoroughfare 
of Maverick, near the outskirts of the town, and, in the 
clear mountain air she could see for a long distance down 
the road. 

Breakfast was over, and Beatrice Vertner had left her 
to attend to some household duties, which weddings ap- 
parently do not make less important in their process of 
dwarfing all other concerns. 

A quarrel between father and son, Margaret was say- 
ing to herself, as she stood by the window, — it had not 
come to that yet, but that Jasper's opposition to his 
father's second marriage had been saved from that only 
by the moderation and temperance of her husband who 
was to be, she felt sure, — seemed, at best, a wretched busi- 
ness ; but this was, she felt, unbearably sad. In the 
foolish days when she was saying Deed nay because she 
did not yet know herself, and he was following her from 
New York to Paris, and from Paris to Geneva, and from 



BENEFITS FORGOT. H 

Geneva to Naples, patient, decently doubtful of himself, 
but persistent, she had seen what it cost him merely to be 
separated from his sons. Later, she had come to under- 
stand how the obligation he had felt to find something 
within himself to replace the tender care of the mother 
his boys had lost before they were old enough to know 
the meaning of such a loss, must have reacted upon and en- 
riched his feeling for them. She remembered how, seeing 
that his concern for their welfare was the substance and 
texture of his life, she had warned him — it was at Naples 
— that such affection as his played with high stakes ; and 
how his face had darkened almost angrily at her hint of 
the possibility that sons might disappoint one's faith in 
them. 

Just before their first meeting Deed had bought and 
stocked for his boys the cattle-range from which she 
hoped he was riding in at this hour, and Jasper was estab- 
lished there in undivided charge until Philip, then in 
the first year of one of his foolish boy's experiments in 
Chile, should be ready to come back and take his share in 
the management. She recalled well enough how she had 
rallied their father's unwitting boasts of Jasper's success, 
how she had assisted with inward amusement at the pre- 
tence that he kept his fatherly fondness covert by banter- 
ing it with her, and how, when that was his mood, she had 
seemed to consent to his transparent vainglory in the 
shrewdness of his clever young men of twenty-four as a 
natural enthusiasm about a successful venture of his own. 
But constantly she had the sense of his loving pride in 
both his boys ; and she liked it. 

Deed could not have told her, even if his knowledge 
of it had got out of the region of half-perceptions in 



12 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

which we keep our reluctances about the faults of those 
we love, that Jasper belonged to the Race of the Magnifi- 
cent, who have their own way — a happy provision arrang- 
ing that no one shall find it worth quite what it costs to 
oppose such ways. When Margaret discovered it for her- 
self, she had only to put it with familiar characteristics of 
Deed to understand how the partnership papers in the 
range, which were the origin of the present difficulty, had 
got themselves signed. 

When Deed, in good-humoured recognition of Jasper's 
successful management of the range, had offered him a 
half-share in the profits from it until Philip should be 
ready to claim the third already belonging in all but form 
to each of the boys, it was like Jasper to say that it was very 
good of his father, and that they ought to " put the thing 
on a business basis." But it was rather more like Deed, 
whose pride in Jasper's business shrewdness commonly 
took shape before the young man himself in a habit of 
ridiculing him indulgently about it, to have laughed at 
him, and consented. And it was not less of a tenor with 
their usual relation that he should have let Jasper have 
his way about giving this profit-sharing, for a limited 
term, the form of a partnership. 

About his own way Margaret knew he would have no 
conceit, while regarding the symmetry of his act in giving 
Jasper something like the reward his faithfulness and 
sagacity in the management of the ranch had earned he 
would have a certain pride. For Margaret, who, for her 
own part, had ever frugalities and cautions to be satisfied 
before she could be about a matter, both understood and 
admired the recklessness with which Deed was accus- 
tomed to do a nice thing thoroughly. To her it was an 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 13 

inevitable touch of character that he should have glanced 
over the papers of partnership which Jasper had drawn 
up, should have signed with a smile for his gratification 
in doing an entirely gratifying thing, and then should 
have had the boy to supper with him at the only restau- 
rant in town, where they drank to the success of the 
range in the champagne which had been left over from 
the previous night's supper of the Order of the Occidental 
Star. 

Deed had not meant to marry again, then, of course, 
and the cattle-range was then an incident of his fortune, 
instead of one of the main facts of it, as it presently be- 
came. 

When he first thought of Margaret he congratulated 
himself that there was still the ranch, for, at a little past 
forty, he found himself through the scoundrelly trick of a 
man he had trusted, almost as entirely on his own hands 
as he had been at twenty — with a fortune to be won again, 
and with life to be begun pretty much afresh. When this 
trouble came on him he thought of the boys ; remembered 
with satisfaction that they were provided for, whatever 
came ; shrugged his shoulders ; took a look at himself in 
the glass, measured himself thoughtfully against the fu- 
ture, brushed the black lock down over the fringe of gray 
in front ; smiled ; went out and had a good dinner ; and 
began again that afternoon. A year later, when he first 
offered himself to Margaret, it was pleasant to know that 
the ranch was now not quite all (some of his mining 
stocks were doing better) ; but the third interest, that 
would still remain to him when Philip should have 
claimed his share in the range had not lost its importance 
to him. And Jasper had done wonderf ul things with the 



14 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

enterprise since they had pledged each other in the bad 
wine of the " Delmonico of the West." 

It was a little later that there began to be discoverable 
in Jasper's manner the hints of opposition to his father's 
second marriage which had lately come near ending in an 
estrangement between father and son. The difference 
between them was, after all, but scantily patched up ; and 
on the head of it Jasper had set out for New York, know- 
ing that he could not be back in time for the wedding, 
and leaving word that he would write his father regard- 
ing another matter which Deed had broached to him just 
before his departure. The other matter was the reorgani- 
zation of the arrangement at the ranch to include Philip, 
who had given over mining, after a twelvemonth in the 
mountains. 

He had gone to Piflon on his return from Chile, with 
his young man's interest in anything rather than the 
usual and appointed thing lying ready to his hand ; but 
he was now willing enough to accept his father's advice 
of a year before, and to join Jasper in looking after the 
ranch, where an assured income awaited him. Deed had 
wished to see this wandering, impulsive, hot-blooded, un- 
settled son of his actually established on the range before 
his marriage to Margaret. Unexpected events at Piflon 
had prevented this ; but when he should come down for 
the wedding it was arranged that he was not to return, 
but was to take up his residence at the ranch immedi- 
ately. 

If this provision for Philip's future had not already 
been made when Margaret first began to be in question, 
Deed could not have asked her to marry him. He felt, 
in a degree which it would be difficult to represent, his 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 15 

responsibilities to his boys ; and the long habit of making 
them the first concern of his life must have prevailed 
with him, whatever his feeling for Margaret, if they had 
needed anything done for them. But the ranch was a 
property which, conducted with any skill, must yield 
them both a handsome revenue, when both should be 
established on it. 

Margaret liked the faithfulness to the future of his 
sons, which would not suffer him to put even her, or their 
common happiness, before it. He was determined to 
leave nothing at loose ends ; and he was even awaiting 
the formality of Jasper's assent to the new arrangement 
at the ranch, as if it were an assent which he was free to 
withhold — as if all property of his boys in the ranch 
were not derived from his generosity, and as if Jasper's 
present tenure were not peculiarly by grace of his father's 
good humour. It was only a form ; but Margaret knew 
that Deed regarded it as a sacred preliminary to their 
marriage ; and when she saw him riding up to the door, 
waving a letter in his hand, she knew what letter it 
must be. 

She ran out into the frosty air to meet him. Stand- 
ing on the porch, under the shadow of the scroll-saw 
work, which was as much in the Queen Anne manner as 
anything about the house, she waited for him to tie his 
horse, cuddling her arms about her waist. The air had 
an edge. She gathered herself together : there was the 
cold to keep out ; and there was a soft, interior content 
which she was willing to keep in. 

It was hard not to be afraid of some of her feelings 
lately. 

" Watch your horse ! " she adjured, with a little nerv- 



16 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ous shiver. He was trying to tie the pony while he kept 
his eyes on her, and the tying was on the way to failure. 
He had taken the letter in his mouth for greater conven- 
ience. They both began to laugh, so that he had to take 
it out. 

" Dearest ! " he whispered, as he caught her to him in 
the porch. But she would not give him his kiss until 
they were in the hallway. 

" It's .come ! " she said, with a joyous nod towards the 
letter in his hand, as they went into the sitting-room, 
which was as discreetly empty as the whole house seemed 
suddenly to have become in the hush of their happiness. 

" Yes," he said, alternately offering and refusing it to 
her, as he held her away to make certain that she was the 
same Margaret with whom he had parted the night before 
for the last time, and who was to give herself to him in a 
few hours. 

She sniffed at the flowers he had slipped into her 
hand in the hallway ; and, to make sure she did not cry, 
laughed at the smile of love on his face, which often op- 
pressed her with the obligation it seemed to lay on her to 
keep it always there. And then she clapped her hands 
and laughed again to perceive in herself a kind of girlish 
pride in his being handsome and manly, and altogether 
very fine and impressive this morning. 

It was true that he was a striking figure as he stood 
holding her at arm's-length and not less so when he left 
her side and went over to the mantel, where he leaned 
his head upon his hand and watched her for a moment in 
silence, as he struck at his riding-boots with the quirt he 
had brought in with him. His hair was a bit grey where 
his large round head had begun to grow bald on each 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 17 

brow ; but this, with his grizzling eyebrows, and the 
strongly marked lines about his mouth, which in a younger 
man would haye seemed merely the outward sign of reso- 
lution, were the only tokens by which one would have 
known him to be more than thirty-five. His hair, like 
his mustache, which was the only adornment of his face, 
was worn clipped rather short ; and this, coupled with 
his rather careful habit of dress, gave him a certain effect 
of trimness and well-being uncommon in the West. He 
had the habit of resting his weight firmly upon the 
ground ; and the dignity and ease of his bearing were 
not lost in the most impetuous of his habitually rapid 
movements. His eyes had a tinge of blue in some lights, 
but it was the indefinable grey in them which gave the 
look of power and firmness to his face. It is doubtful if 
these eyes were really bluer in his kindly moments ; but 
it is not doubtful that they seemed so. That which dis- 
tinguished his look and his manner, however, after the 
force which no one could fail to feel in him, was an effect 
of unconquerable youthfulness and buoyancy. His eager, 
mildly searching glance, his manner of unceasing alert- 
ness and energy, gave one the sense of a man much 
alive. 

He glanced with keen liking about a room which he had 
known for a long time, but which, somehow, had never 
been as interesting a room as it was this morning. He 
was almost in a mood to forgive the wall-paper, which in- 
sulted the remnant of Eastern taste in him ; and as he 
turned and, with his hands in his pockets, stared into the 
fire, not knowing what to say in his happiness, it gave 
him a warm feeling about the heart to see what a gay time 
the combustible pifton-wood of the mountains was having 



18 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

of it in the little grate. There was even a certain light- 
headedness about the what-not in the corner, on which 
the collection of mineral specimens — part of the religion 
of Colorado housekeeping — was reflecting the Colorado 
sunshine from unexpected facets of ore ; while the iron 
pyrites winked in the sun at some possible tenderfoot 
mistaking it for gold. 

Beatrice Vertner's taste had contrived to give a home- 
like expression to such furniture as there was ; but the 
room was rather bare. The big photograph of Yeta Pass, 
in which a train had stopped to be taken, hung in frame- 
less, fly-spotted solitude above the tennis-rackets and rid- 
ing-crops in one corner. There was a good engraving 
above the fireplace, framed in unplaned scantling, and 
two clever oil-paintings by some of Beatrice's Eastern 
friends brightened one corner of the room, which was 
further lighted up by a brilliant-hued Navajo blanket, 
hung as a portiere at one of the doorways. The home- 
made rag carpet, in its modest propriety of colouring, 
caused the Western villainy in wall paper to wear a self- 
conscious smirk. At the side window there was a burst 
of colour, where the lower sash pretended, not very seri- 
ously, to be stained glass. 

" Such a spick-span conscience as I've got this morn- 
ing, Margaret," he said, coming over to her and taking her 
hands again, while he looked down into her eyes, which 
she straightway dropped. " There isn't an unswept 
corner nor an undusted piece of furniture in it. I've had 
out all the couches, and had all the pictures down, and 
gone in for a general house-cleaning. The boys are safe 
and settled, both of them, and in seven hours — " 

" Seven and a half," she corrected smilingly, with the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 19 

precision which seems never to leave a woman who has 
once taught school. 

" Half, is it ? To be sure ; half-past four. But every- 
thing must be whole this morning, Margaret, like our 
happiness. Have you noticed how every one feels respon- 
sible and — interested about this affair ? They were all at 
the windows as I rode up the street — or rather they were 
behind the curtains — and I had to try to look the disin- 
terested morning caller on my way to pay a sort of duty 
call. But they saw through me. My foolish joy leaks 
through my eyes, I suppose. Margaret dear," he asked, 
taking her doubtful and feebly reluctant form in his arms 
(for, even on the eve of her wedding, the indomitable 
Puritan in her must have its shamefaced way with her 
will), " tell me, does it distress you that I can't conceal 
it ? You are so much better at it. Let me see your eyes. 
Come, you are "not fair. Look up!" And then, as she 
tremulously took his glance for a moment, he put back 
his big head, and laughed greatly. " I see ; you tvere 
thinking it : that it is unbecoming that they should be 
laughing over our happiness — indecorous — um — unseemly. 
Margaret, you are great fun ! " 

" Am I ? " she asked, with a shy smile, keeping her 
eyes on the button she was twisting on his coat. 

" Yes, yes," he cried through his laughter, as he drew 
her to the sofa ; " you don't know what you miss in not 
being able to enjoy yourself." He caught her to him, 
and she hid her head on his broad breast for happiness. 

And with his arm about her he opened the letter. 
" Isn't it fine, dear, to know that Philip is settled down 
and. done for, before we begin with each other, and that 
we need not fear for him ? Otherwise I should have felt 



20 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

as if I were running away from him. I like to get this 
letter from Jasper just at this time. It's only a form, 
but it makes everything quite sure. I'm afraid we are 
too happy," he sighed, as he glanced over the first lines of 
the letter ; and as he turned the page he looked up in a 
daze, and could not believe that there had ever been such 
a thing as happiness in the world. He bit his lips, not to 
cry out. 

Margaret watched him in silent fright as he read on. 
A pallor deepened over his face. It went, and he appeared 
to regain himself. But the thought, whatever it was, 
seemed suddenly to clutch him at the throat, and he 
buried his face in his hands with a groan. 

Margaret's arm, for the first time of their own motion, 
stole gently about him. And so they sat for a long time 
in silence. 

Once she said softly, " I'm so sorry, dearest." Ques- 
tions, she saw, could not help him, and she did not know 
how to say her sympathy. She understood without words 
that Jasper had in some way played his father false, and 
she yearned over the man who in a few hours was to be 
her husband, with an awed sense of what such a falsity 
must mean to him. 

The letter shocked her when she read it, but it could 
not sharpen her pain for him. 

Jasper explained that he could not hold himself bound 
by the understanding under which his father apparently 
supposed him to have taken a half share in the profits of 
the range, and that he must decline to surrender to Philip 
any share in it. He " stood upon the articles of partner- 
ship, giving him the rights of an equal partner, for a term 
of years." The rest was made up of phrases. He would be 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 21 

very glad to offer his brother employment on the range ; 
would be " most happy to afford him every "... trusted 
that " such an arrangement between them might be mu- 
tually "... hoped that this " would be accepted in the 
spirit in which " . . . ; was sure that his father must feel 
that " business is always business " ; and, disclaiming any 
motive of greed or animosity, begged him to believe that 
he remained his " most affectionate son." 

Margaret did not dare look at the stricken man beside 
her when she had finished this. 

" If he had only died ! " he moaned. 

" Oh, I know, James ; I know ! " she murmured, with 
an uncertain caress. 

"Do you, dear ? " He looked up dully. Something 
vital seemed to have gone out of him. His haggard look 
appalled her. She shrank from it with a fluttering 
glance. " No, no," he said ; " you don't know. You 
should be glad you can't. You must have cared for a 
child in sickness and in health, and done things for his 
sake, and been through all sorts of weather with him, and 
scolded his badness, and loved his lovableness, to know." 

" Of course, of course," whispered Margaret, mechan- 
ically, because she could not find the right words, if, in 
truth, there were any. 

" You can guess, dear," he said, " and it's good of you ; 
but to know you ought to have watched his growth, with 
its touching likeness to your own growth ; and have seen 
the little armful of flesh, with the tiny, beating heart, 
that you were once afraid you would stop with a rough 
clasp, grow to be a man, with a man's comfortable power 
over the world into which he came so unknowingly — and 
with a man's awful capacity for right and wrong." He 



22 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

sighed. " Yes, yes," he went on with a note of bitter- 
ness ; " you must have done what you could to help him 
to a place in the world,"— his voice broke,—" and perhaps 
you ought really to have been both father and mother to 
him," he added, with the ghost of his smile : " his friend, 
as you stood in the place of his mother ; his comrade, as 
you were in fact his father, to know. Thank heaven, you 
don't know, Margaret ! " 

The patient desolation of his tone touched her inex- 
pressibly. She took his hand in both of hers, studying it 
absently a moment, and one might have thought she 
meant to raise it to her lips ; but, struggling against the 
tears in her voice, she said, " Ingratitude, though, James 
— isn't it much of a piece wherever you find it, and — and 
suffer from it? I can understand that, I think." She 
paused, biting her lip for self-control. " Oh, it is cow- 
ardly!" she broke out. "Doesn't it seem so, dear? 
Cowardly and brutal ! " Her arm slipped about him 
again, as she searched for these blundering words of help- 
fulness. She would have given the world to reach and 
soothe the pang which she seemed to herself to be merely 
moving about in a helpless circle. The unyielding tradi- 
tion in which she had been nurtured, and which possessed 
her less since she had let herself love him, but which still 
was mistress of her, had never been so irksome. 

At the moment she longed to be the creature of some 
sunnier land, the women of which do not have to wonder 
how they shall comfort those they love, who have a nat- 
ural language for affection. But the honesty in her 
would not suffer her to express more than she could feel 
instinctively. " Who — who but a coward," she went on 
chokingly, " could wrong so unanswerably as ingratitude 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 23 

wrongs — so far past help, so deep beyond protest ; so deep, 
deep down that the mere thought of lifting a voice against 
it is a misery, a nausea, a degradation ! " 

He leaped up. " Yes, yes," he cried, with impatient 
energy ; " but one can act, must act when the thing's past 
talk. Where did I leave my hat, Margaret ? " He took 
her by both shoulders, with a sudden impulse, and looked 
for a moment into her eyes. She took fright at his set 
face, in which, save the tenderness for her, there was 
scarce anything of sanity. 

" What — what are you going to do ? " she asked, under 
her breath. 

He clenched his hands, as he turned from her, and 
caught up his hat, which lay on the sofa. " Oh, I don't 
know, my girl ! I don't know ! My worst, I suppose." 

He was flinging himself out of the door. " James ! " 
she murmured reproachfully. He turned and kissed her. 
" In an hour," he whispered, and was gone before she 
could utter one of all the pleadings that hung upon her 
lips. She tremblingly watched him untie his horse. 
Every movement of his hands was charged with an angry 
energy that terrified her. Her heart leaped in fear at the 
wrathful twitch with which he loosed the knot that they 
had been laughing at together twenty minutes back ; and 
she cowered at the ugly cut under which the pony shrank, 
as Deed set off at a gallop. 

Was this the good, the gentle man she loved ? She 
put her hands to her eyes to shield them from the mem- 
ory of the look on his face, as he parted with her. It was 
like the look of unreason — such a look as one recalls in 
explanation of a terrible event, after it has befallen. 



24 BENEFITS FORGOT. 



II. 



It was rather more than an hour before he returned, 
and Margaret had time to think of many things. She 
trembled at the thought of what he might be doing at any 
moment of her watching, and waiting, and poking of the 
fire. She recalled all that she knew of his hot and reck- 
less temper ; she told over to herself all that she had ever 
heard from others of the relentless fixity with which he 
carried out a thing on which he was resolved. 

She knew sadly the quality of his temper, of course ; 
her experiences of it could hardly have failed to be numer- 
ous and bitter, in the time which had elapsed since she had 
known him. It was the chief flaw in his character. In 
accounting for it to herself, she said, when she was not 
fresh from suffering from some manifestation of it, that 
no doubt it went along inevitably with his generous and 
impulsive heart. She was ignorant about such things, and 
about men in general, but she had never known any one 
so entirely good, and kind, and open-hearted, and she told 
herself it was not for her to measure or question the cor- 
relative fault that must always go with a great virtue like 
that. She had moments of grave doubt about this, of 
course, and her doubt had been a minor reason among the 
controlling ones which had caused her to refuse him at 
first. When she finally discovered that she loved him, it 
didn't" matter ; nothing seemed to matter then. She now 
thought of his temper as one of the things she would set 
herself to modify — or, rather, to help him about — when 
they were married. What was marriage for, if not for 
some such mutual strengthening and improvement ? 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 25 

Something Yertner had told her when she first came, 
and at which she had laughed at the time, recurred to her. 
It still made her smile, but in a frightened way. Vertner 
had heard it in Leadville. It was apropos of the grim 
strength of purpose which every one felt in Deed. Some 
one had come to a young lawyer there, to offer him a case 
in which Deed was engaged on the other side, and had 
been asked to " come off ! " " Ain't you got more sense," 
inquired the practitioner, expressively, " than to take half 
a day out of a ten-dollar-a-day job to come and set me on 
to Deed in a case where he's got the ghost of a show ? 
Never saw him grip his fist, like that, in a court of law, 
did you ? Thought not. Must is must about that time, 
young man. There ain't no two ways to a burro's kick. 
I've been there. In fact, I was there day before yesterday. 
Beaten ? No, sir ; I wasn't beaten. ' I was cyclonized. I 
was taken up by the toes of my boots, and swung round 
and round with one of the prettiest rotary motions you 
ever saw, and banged against the top of Uncompaghre 
Peak, out there. No one but myself would have thought 
it worth while to pick up what was left of me, I suppose. 
But I did it ; and I picked up too much sense at the same 
time to try it again. Why, that man's got more knowl- 
edge of the law, and more raw grit, and hang on, and stick 
to'n — " he questioned the air with uplifted arm for a com- 
parison — " well," he ended hopelessly. " I'll tell you what 
it is," he went on, with renewed grip of language ; " for 
them that likes monkeying with the buzz-saw, there ain't 
nothing like it, short of breaking a faro-bank. It's straw- 
berries and cream to that sort. But to peaceably disposed 
citizens like you and me, Charlie, there ain't nothing at 
all, anywhere, like staying pleasantly and sociably to home, 



26 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

and letting the saw hum its merry little way through the 
other fellow's fingers." 

From time to time Margaret would go to the window, 
and look wistfully down the road. The expression on her 
round, shrewd, suggestive, wise little face at these times 
would have helped an observer to understand the look 
which made her seem older than her twenty-nine years ; 
it was the authoritative look of experience. The look of 
over-experience that sometimes fixes itself, to the sadness 
of the beholder, on the face of a woman who has been 
down into the fight for bread with men, had passed by 
Margaret's inextinguishable womanliness ; but she had 
not led an easy life ; and one saw it in her face — a face 
proportioned with a harmony that strangely failed to make 
it beautiful. 

Her eyes, which were small and bright, were deeply set 
under a high and well-modelled brow, from which the hair 
was brushed straight back in a way that must have been 
unbecoming to another type of face, but which was ad- 
mirably suited to her own. In falling over her shapely 
little ears, the silky brown hair waved in a fashion pleas- 
ant to see. Her mouth, which was small and daintily 
made, wore an expression of unusual firmness. 

In conversation she would fix her animated hazel eyes 
in absorbed attention on the face of the person with whom 
she spoke, and when the talk was of serious things, a deep, 
far-away look would suddenly possess these eyes. She had 
an extraordinarily sweet smile, and there was a gentle and 
kindly soberness in her expression. She was well and 
compactly made, yet her effect was unimposing. She 
seemed short and slight. She had a well-kept little effect 
in her dress and the appointments of her person ; but no 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 27 

one would have accused Margaret of knowing anything 
about dress. She was rather discreetly clothed than dressed 
in the sense of adornment. She wore white cuffs at her 
wrists and a narrow collar at her throat, fastened by a 
brooch of gold wrought in an old-fashioned pattern. 

Margaret was not smiling when Beatrice came in, 
some time after Deed had gone, and found her with her 
head pressed against the pane. She turned her tearful 
face away as Beatrice drew her to her. 

Mrs. Vertner, one saw, had been quite recently a 
pretty woman, and she was still young — a year or two 
younger than Margaret. The brilliant expression which 
had distinguished her among all her acquaintance in her 
young girl days in Newton (the Boston Newton), where 
she was still remembered as a clever girl who had made 
an inexplicable marriage, was overlaid, for the most part, 
by a look of anxiety and harassment, due to the con- 
ditions of her life. She made her housekeeping as little 
a sordid, crude, and ugly business as she could, and took 
its difficulties light-heartedly; but housekeeping in a 
Western town that has still to " get its growth " is at best 
a soul-wearing affair. Just now she suffered under the 
rule of a Swedish maid-servant who knew no English, 
and whose knowledge of cooking was limited to a fine 
skill in broiling steak insupportably, and a vain address 
in the brewing of undrinkable coffee. 

" Crying, little one ? " she asked affectionately. 
" Won't you do something a wee bit like some one else, 
dear, one of these days, and let me be by to see it? 
That's a good girl." She kissed her, with a laugh. 
" But stay odd all the rest of the time, Margaret. I 
shouldn't like you if you weren't odd, you know — not 



28 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

even if you were ever so little less odd. If I want you to 
be conventional, it is only for a moment, to see how it 
would seem. Come! Other brides smile. Try one 
smile ! " she pleaded. And at Margaret's helpless amuse- 
ment, she snatched her from the window, and, humming 
a vague air, which defined itself in a moment as one of 
the Waldteufel waltzes, she beat time for a second, laugh- 
ing in Margaret's bewildered, tear-stained face, and 
caught her away into a romping dance. 

" There ! " she cried, as she sank upon the sofa, breath- 
less with laughing and dancing. " I've shaken you into 
sorts, I hope, and you're ready for the ceremony — or will 
be, if you'll ever get yourself dressed. Not that I call it 
dressed, to wear that grey — oh, I don't mean that, Maggie 
dear," she exclaimed at a pained look on Margaret's face. 
She crushed Margaret to her in a devouring embrace. 
" Or, rather, I do," she added honestly ; " but I didn't 
mean to say it. ~No ; you'd better wear it," she went on, 
at some sign of hesitation from Margaret. " It will go 
beautifully with all the rest of it. Margaret Der- 
wenter," she cried, with an affectation of seriousness, 
"shall I tell you something? You will never be mar- 
ried." She retired for the effect, but fell upon her with 
all the armoury of woman's peace-making at Margaret's 
start. " Literal ! " she cried. " Will you never take 
things less hard ? As if I meant it ! What I did mean 
sounds foolish after you've taken it like that. But I may 
as well say it. I don't believe the marriage ceremony is 
going to marry you as it does other women, Margaret; 
and you needn't tell me it is. If you are ever married, it 
will be by yourself ; yes, I mean it — by a kind of slow 
process of consent to the affair. Of course you will have 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 29 

a proper respect for the ceremony, and you will think it 
has married you. But women like you, Maggie, — not 
that there are any, — are not married in that way. Now, 
I was married when I left the church, and everybody 
knew it." 

Margaret laughed, not on compulsion this time, and, 
catching her arm about Beatrice's waist, drew her to the 
window to look down the road with her for Deed's 
coming. 

Almost any part of Margaret's history, before the time 
when she began to teach, and, by a curious arrangement 
of her own, to see the world, must wrong, or at least mis- 
speak, in the telling the gentle and sweet-natured woman 
she had become. 

From the first she had ideas ; and it would be hard to 
say what one must call the ambition which gave purpose 
and meaning to her young days. From the point of view 
of her grandmother's farm-house on a bleak New England 
hill, the pursuit of what she called culture represented to 
Margaret during these days an inspiration, an intellectual 
stimulus, and a rule of life. It would be a quarrelsome 
person who would not suffer any one to get what fun he 
might out of the idea of culture for culture's angular 
dear sake ; and as an alternative to the apples and cider, 
the mite-societies, the " socials," and the lectures which 
in winter stand for mental diversion in the back country 
of New England, it has advantages. 

But if some one said that the theory of life which it 
implies lacks ease, atmosphere, curves, lacks even, to say 
the worst of it at once, the sense of humour, only one who 
had a great many such New England winters in him 
ought to say a word. 



30 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Margaret, in her pursuit of this mystic culture, con- 
ceived education to he, until her education was done, an 
affair possessing length, breadth, and thickness. It is to 
be feared that she even " improved " her opportunities. 
They were not many, poor girl, until she left the New 
Hampshire village for her first stay in New York, where 
she studied at a school in which she spent a year learning 
that she was the only pupil who regarded its advantages 
as precious privileges. Then she left it for Vassar, which 
was, at least, not touched with sham. She found here 
other girls with her thought about education; and she 
went about the erection of her structure of intelligence 
with an energy which presently sent her home to her grand- 
mother ill. The structure remained her point after her 
return, however ; and the reader who knows anything of 
this habit of thought should not need to be told that she 
looked upon it, not as a dwelling that she should one day 
inhabit, much less as a temple which should one day 
inhabit her, but as a shrine the graceful proportions of 
which it was the final privilege to set forever within one's 
blessed sight. At nineteen Margaret was more in the 
way to becoming that distressing product of our felicitous 
new ways of thinking about women and about education 
— the female prig — than a friendly biographer would like 
to record. 

Her escape from such a fate was due to circumstances 
outside her control. In the midst of one of the summer 
vacations she took up a copy of the " Springfield Eepub- 
lican," to learn that the little competence left her by her 
father had been embezzled, with more important trust 
funds, by an unscrupulous executor. Soon after, her 
grandmother died. Every Sunday morning, from the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 31 

time when Margaret had come to her as a child, she had 
lain in bed, this estimable lady, thinking how she would 
change on Monday in Margaret's favour the will which 
bequeathed all she had to a charity. On Sunday morn- 
ing a late breakfast gave time for reflection on such sub- 
jects ; but on Monday there was never any time at all. 
And on one of the Mondays which was to have wit- 
nessed the fulfilment of her resolve, she died in Margaret's 
arms. 

The double catastrophe had many lessons for Margaret. 
She sorrowed for her grandmother bitterly out of the sim- 
ple and loving heart which no system of cultivation could 
have educated out of her ; and she never thought of blam- 
ing the neglect which had left her with the problem of 
earning her living close upon her. The money lost 
through the executor's rascality troubled her solely as an 
educated girl — a girl with duties, with responsibilities to 
her self-development. It would be putting it too crudely 
to say that she grieved for the loss of the money because 
one might have bought such a lot of culture with it : 
travel, that is, and the leisure for study, and the sight of 
good pictures, and the knowledge of all the " cultivated " 
things. But it is only the expression that is at fault : her 
idea hovered very near this thought. As she could not 
have the thing in one shape, she determined to buy it for 
herself in another. 

It was necessary that she should provide for herself, 
and she conceived the enterprising notion of making this 
necessity serve her purpose. She " taught " ; but she gave 
the heavy-hearted word a meaning of her own by procur- 
ing, through a friend of her father in Boston (after a year 
spent in school- teaching), a position as travelling governess 



32 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

with a family which put several of her favourite novels to 
shame by treating her as one of the species. 

She made the tour of Europe with these people, with 
what she called, in her letters to one of her college friends, 
" most satisfying results." She did not mean to the busi- 
ness man's children whom she was teaching, but to what 
she might have called her own " mental progress." The 
business man, when he called the results " satisfactory," 
meant something separated by the distance between any 
two of the planets from the idea contained in Margaret's 
word ; but his word was at least as much reward as she 
had expected, outside her salary, for her faithful efforts 
to decant some of her knowledge into the minds of the 
business man's children. 

When she was back in America again, she recklessly 
sat down and waited for another engagement looking to 
the same ends. This time she wanted to go to Japan, 
and she kept the advertisement in which her wishes were 
succinctly stated in the " Nation " and in the " Tribune " 
until a family discovered itself intending towards Japan, 
and desiring a governess of Margaret's capacity, tempera- 
ment, and terms. 

It will be seen that this was a woman of energy, of in- 
dependence, and of original ideas ; but so much lies on the 
surface. To make it at all clear how she contrived to rec- 
oncile these rather aggressive qualities to the softest and 
gentlest womanhood there need be, one must have known 
her. To be sweetly firm ; to be gifted with the kind of 
lucidity that does not roil one's own commonplace mud- 
dle of a mind by its mere existence ; to know, and not to 
know you know ; to hold immoderate opinions in a mod- 
erate way ; to be transfigured by energy, and yet consent 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 33 

to the propriety of your neighbour lying on his sofa ; to 
perceive that the boundaries of the State of New York, 
or even — though this is asking a good deal — the confines 
of the British Isles, do not limit the imaginable, not to 
say ladylike, regions of our globe : in a word, to be toler- 
ant — these are great matters. It can hardly discredit 
Margaret with any reasonable soul to own that she failed, 
for the most part, to realize all these excellences; but 
they had become the tormenting measure of her ideal 
some time before she met Deed, on a visit to Beatrice 
Vertner (the one friend she had made at her New York 
school) at her home in Colorado. 

It was mainly the travel which she had sought as 
gratifying her aspirations towards culture which disabused 
her of her young feeling about that ignis fatuus ; the 
sight of the various, the populous, the instructive world 
furnished her with an altogether new point of view, from 
which she grew to pity the provincial Diana who had set 
out with such a fine courage to hunt down culture with 
her little bow and arrow. And yet the Diana remained ; 
and the Margaret of ten years after the Vassar days was 
at least as remarkable for her likeness, in remote, illusive 
ways, to the Margaret who had one and the same con- 
science for the Temple of Culture, and for the Temple of 
Pure Eight, as she was remarkable for her exquisite, her 
admirable, and her surprising difference. 

The new notions of life begotten of going about and 
seeing things had led the way ; but no one who knew her 
well could have been at a loss to perceive the moulding 
force which had done the real work of change. It was 
her womanliness coming in upon her, at the same time, 
with its incomparable enrichment, which had taught her 



34 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

old vagaries the way to the graces of the new Margaret ; 
it was what one might almost have called her natural gift 
for womanliness which finally chastened her edges, and 
which, in shaping her young strenuousness to softer lines, 
lost for it none of the validity and justness and simple 
strength which had gone with her maidenly ways of 
thinking. 

And yet it is certain that one is not reared in New 
Hampshire for nothing ; that one does not spend four 
years at Vassar without bearing the Vassar mark ; above 
all, it is clear that no one can teach for ten years — it may 
be that no one can teach for an hour — and live to hide 
the fact. 

It was Beatrice who first caught sight of the familiar 
figures of the pony and his rider, coming np the road at 
a gallop, pursued by a swirl of dust. She could not be 
persuaded that she did not hear the baby crying, and de- 
scended upon the sound before Deed could reach the 
porch. 

Margaret would rather he had not tried to find a smile 
for her. He looked a year older than when he had left 
her side. They stood for a moment, when she opened the 
door to him, looking into each other's eyes. Then she 
cast her arms about him, and drew him to her with an 
impulse of protection, — the kind of refuge against the 
vexations of the world that a woman offers to the man 
who is dear to her, as if he were the sole sufferer from 
them on the planet, — and whispered some words in his 
ear. 

" I am so sorry," she said simply, as she took his arm, 
and led him into the room, where she had made up a 
brighter fire against his return. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 35 

He sat heavily on the sofa, and stared at the blazing 
piiion sticks with the look of a man whose fight is done. 

He looked away from her. " We musn't talk of it," 
he said, after a moment. " It's no stuff to make wed- 
ding-days of. I don't know," he went on, biting his lip, 
" how I am going to get my forgiveness that this should 
have happened as it has." 

She came and stood by his side. " Do you begrudge 
my sharing your trouble, James ? " she asked. " Would 
you rather have borne it alone ? I thought that was what 
it meant to be — " 

" What, dear ? " he asked tenderly. He drew her 
down to him, and put his arm about her. She sank on 
the floor beside him. 

"A wife," she said, blushing faintly, and looking 
down. 

Their romance was not less dear to them than if they 
had been younger : it was more sober, but not less valiant. 

" Urn," commented Deed, with a wan smile, patting 
her hand affectionately. She sat for a moment in a rev- 
erie that took no account of their trouble, and was almost 
happy. But catching sight of his tense and stricken face, 
" Something has happened," she said tremulously. 

" Yes ; the law can't help me," he answered wearily. 
" If there were nothing else, I must have let him go with 
his plunder, and have found heart somehow to tell Philip 
that I had let myself be done out of his future, with a 
fool's trust." 

"Nothing but the law? Then there is something 
else ? There is a remedy ? " 

He did not respond to the joy in her tone. " Yes," he 
answered gravely. 



36 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

She started back, and rose from his side, all her fears 
alive in her face. 

" James ! " she cried incriminatingly. He sat silent, 
with his head in his hands. She regarded him for a mo- 
ment in anxious perplexity. Then she reached forth her 
hand, and laid it softly on his shoulder. " Yon — you are 
quite sure you are doing right ? " she asked gently. 

He withdrew himself. " Margaret ! " he cried re- 
proachfully. " How could I do a wrong to him ? " 

"You can do a wrong to yourself. You can let a 
longing to right yourself carry you too far," she said 
bravely. 

" Don't talk in that way, Margaret. There, was but 
one right and one wrong in the world. I had to have that 
right. What I have done is just." 

" Oh, I hope so ! " she cried. 

He was silent for a moment. He was thinking of 
many things. Suddenly he turned his eyes to hers, and 
regarded her piercingly. He took her hands in an eager 
pressure. "What would you do for me?" he asked at 
last abruptly. 

" My dear James, I — " began Margaret, startled. 

" Would you give up all that I have meant to make 
yours for — for me ? " 

His intense gaze was unbearable. She turned away. 
" You know I would," she murmured. 

"Don't think that because I am giving I have the 
right to take away. It's not so." 

" Rights, dear ? Must we talk of them ? Don't you 
think—" 

" Well ? " he asked, trying to be gentle ; but his rest- 
less anxiety got into his voice. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 37 

" That they stop, I was going to say, where love be- 
gins. But, James, you seem so far off — so strange." She 
laid a hand doubtfully upon him, and looked into his face 
with a questioning glance. " Would it reach you, if I 
said a thing like that ? " she asked. Her smile was piti- 
ful. " my dearest, of course I don't care. How should 
I ? Did I ever care ? And now, if it would make you 
happy—" 

" Must it make me happy ? " he asked. 

' l Would it be worth while to you if it did not ? " 

" Ah, well ! " he exclaimed inconclusively, and for 
some minutes they did not speak. Margaret watched his 
absorbed face and knitted brows with a thousand rising 
doubts. 

He may have seen the pained look of inquiry on her 
face, for he took her clasped hands and stroked her hair 
thoughtfully. With her elbow on the sofa, and her head 
in her upturned hand, she coiled herself on the floor, and 
regarded the crackling fire for a long time in wistful 
silence. 

She was glad when he spoke, though all her fears cried 
out against what he might say. As he bent over her, 
speaking in a low voice, she kept her eyes on the fire. 
" Tell me again it would not pain you to lose it all, Mar- 
garet. It is not merely money. It has many sides and 
meanings. It is all worldly comfort, advantage, leisure, 
of course ; but, besides, it is freedom — freedom to do the 
things you have wished to do, Margaret ; the things you 
have not been able to do. It's not fair to ask you until 
you have tested it. You don't know how much you would 
be giving up." 

She smiled. " I know how much I shall be gaining if 



38 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

— if it can serve you," she said softly, her head turned 
from him. 

He observed her with keen, grave eyes, which, as he 
looked, filled with tenderness. He rose and took her in 
his arms. 

" Is this my reserved Margaret ? " he asked. " Is this 
the quiet little woman who, a few months since, would 
scarcely own she loved me, and only the other day was 
protesting that her training had not taught her the lan- 
guage of affection ? " 

She hid her face, " What is it that you wish to do, 
James?" she asked anxiously, when she could raise it 
again. 

He released her without answering. After a moment 
he took a turn up and down the room. 

" You won't believe it ! " he said suddenly. He went 
back, and flung himself upon the sofa, with a half groan. 
The fire had blazed up, and in its play upon his face 
Margaret read the torture that was going on in him. She 
was beside him again in a moment. " Margaret," he said, 
as he caught her hand once more, " do you remember the 
story of Samson ? " 

" Surely," she answered in wonder. " Why ? " 

"His locks were traitorously shaven. His strength, 
which was all his riches, was basely taken from him by 
one he trusted. Then his enemies believed they had con- 
quered him, for his power was gone, and they had put out 
his two eyes. But in Gaza — do you remember, dear ? — 
when they were gathered to see his shame, he put forth 
one last, mighty effort, and pulled down the temple over 
their heads and his. The story has always had a noble 
ring to me, I don't know why. To-day it comes back 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 39 

with special meaning. Would you mind reading it over 
to me, dear ? " 

Margaret gazed at him in trouble and uncertainty; 
but she went for the Bible which was her single inherit- 
ance from her mother. At home she always kept it on 
the table near her bed. Just now it was in the trunk, 
up-stairs. When she had found it, she brought the vol- 
ume to him, and, kneeling down with her arm on his 
knee and her face to the blaze, where she could see him 
by turning her head, opened quickly to the place. 

" ' But the Philistines took him, and put out his 
eyes,' " she began, " ' and brought him down to Gaza, and 
bound him with fetters of brass — ' " 

" No ; a little further on, please," said he, keeping his 
eyes closed. 

" ' And it came to pass,' " she began again, towards the 
the end of the chapter, " ' when their hearts were merry, 
that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us 
sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison 
house ; and he made them sport ; and they set him be- 
tween the pillars. 

" ' And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the 
hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the 
house standeth, that I may lean upon them. . . . 

"'And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, 
Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, 
I pray thee, only this once, God, that I may be at once 
avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.' " 

Deed rose abruptly, and paced the floor. Margaret read 
on, fearful of she knew not what. 

" ' And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars 
upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne 



40 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with 
his left. 

" ' And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. 
And he bowed himself with all his might ; and the house 
fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were 
therein.' " 

Margaret dropped the book, and looked at Deed. He 
was standing quite still, listening in absorption. 

" Was it not great ? Was it not well done, Mar- 
garet ? " 

" I don't know," she said, with a touch of preciseness 
which, without her will, would often make its way into 
her tone when matters of propriety or morality were in 
question. She reflected a moment. " Was it right to kill 
so many for revenge only ? " 

" It was just. His loss was not a common one. It was 
his two eyes." 

" But barbarous justice, don't you think so, dear ? It 
would be better to suffer under the sense of the worst 
wrong." 

"JSTo, no," said he, earnestly, almost eagerly; "to me 
it seems nobly done. He did not try to save himself. He 
perished of his own will in the general ruin." 

Margaret had long been watching him anxiously; 
but now, terrified beyond control, she burst forth, "0 
James, what has Samson's story to do with you or 
me?" 

" Everything ! Everything ! " he cried. " Has not Jas- 
per taken my strength in teaching me to know him ? Has 
he not taken my eyes in robbing me of himself, and of 
Philip's future, at a stroke ? " 

He paced the floor impatiently. She put forth her 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 41 

hand with an instinctive gesture of deprecation. His hag- 
gard face, with its look of determination, awed her. 
When she tried to cry out her voice failed her. 

" Margaret," he cried, pausing suddenly in his walk 
at some look in her face, " you would not have me bear 
it!" 

" James," she answered, " it is hard, very hard, I 
know ; but yes, I would bear it. What else is there for 
it?" 

" What else ? " he cried. " All else ! Why, Margaret, 
can you ask ? Do you think I could live, and not strike 
back ? Am I so weak a thing ? Am I cheated of all my 
power, even in your eyes ? Why, dearest — " he drew her 
to him, as she rose, with a tremulous motion, and surveyed 
her face — " why, dearest," he repeated, " I have still Sam- 
son's power." 

" Still Samson's power ? " She repeated the words 
helplessly. 

" The power to make him suffer with me," he said 
sternly. " The power to pull down the temple over his 
head." 

" And yours ? " 

" Surely. Did you think I could not find Samson's 
courage for Samson's remedy ? " 

" But you will not ! Surely you will not ! " 

" I have," he said, as he turned away. 

Margaret bowed her head. " Oh," she cried, " you 
said well that I could not believe it." She kept her face 
in her hands, catching her breath with the sobs that shook 
her. 

" Margaret ! Margaret ! " he besought her. But she 
did not heed. He turned away in desperation. 



42 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Is it — is it irrevocable ? " she asked, when she could 
command herself. 

" Could Samson have built the temple again?" 

" There must be some retreat." 

" I have given my word." 

"You can buy it back again." 

His face hardened. " So Jasper might say," returned 
he. " Listen, Margaret," he entreated ; " I am within my 
rights — my legal rights. What would you have ? May I 
not do what I will with my own ? In his letter he says 
that he reckons his ' half interest,' as he calls it, at $75,- 
000, and that he ' can't be expected to give up a thing 
like that.' An hour ago I sold the entire range and cattle 
for $25,000, without inquiring his preferences. He lias 
given it up," he said grimly. 

She looked into his eyes for a moment in silence. At 
last she said, " Is this sale completed?" 

" No ; but I am morally bound to complete it." 

" You shall not." 

"What?" 

" My dear James you shall not. Oh, how can I argue 
such a thing, if you don't see it ? It is cruel, it is wrong, 
it is wicked ! " 

" You must let me be the judge of that, Margaret," 
said Deed, gravely. 

" O James, why am I what I am to you, if I may not 
be your conscience, when yours — under frightful trial, I 
know — has left you ? You have no right to do this thing." 
She came close to his side. 

" Oh, there comes your teacher's theory of life," he 
cried, in unbearable irritation, " your hidebound JSTew 
England conscience, that will not see circumstances, that 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 43 

refuses the idea of palliation as if it were a snare, that 
finds the same wrong in an act under all conditions, as if 
killing were always murder." 

"James, James," begged Margaret, quite calm and 
brave now, " don't talk of me. I am anything you say. 
Think of yourself. Consider the life of remorse you 
are condemning yourself to. Distrust the false passion 
and pride that tell you you are right now. You are 
wrong. Listen to me, who have nothing to gain by tell- 
ing you so. You are wrong." She spoke the words that 
came to her. 

" Have I not the right to make him suffer as I suf- 
fer?" he asked coldly. 

" I don't know. You have not the right to use all your 
rights. I am sure of that. It is what they are always 
telling us, but is it the less true — the world would be in- 
tolerable if every one demanded all he is entitled to? 
You must feel that. Self-surrender, self-denial, all that 
— are they only phrases in the books ? Are they too big 
and fine for our every-day world ? " 

She paused for a thoughtful moment, and with a 
glance of infinite tenderness regarded him, where he 
stood restlessly gnawing at his mustache, and snapping 
his fingers. 

" As if I need ask ! " she exclaimed. " As if you had 
ever needed anything better than just ordinary Thurs- 
day, Friday, and Saturday for your goodness, dear ! Don't 
I know it? Who ever used more every-day generosity 
and kindli — " 

" Hush, hush, Margaret ! " he insisted. " The thing's 
done. I tell you." 

The fire, which had been dying down, leaped up, and 



44 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

glowed upon his face. The look she saw on it taught her 
patience. " Listen, James," she begged, fighting back the 
sudden tears, which, somehow, had slipped by her guard. 

He shook himself free from her hand with a kind of 
courteous impatience, and walked to the other side of the 
room. 

" Don't preach, Margaret, of all things." 

She gazed at him sadly. " Suppose we wait until to- 
morrow morning to speak of this, dear," she said gently. 
" I can talk to James Deed ; but his evil spirit I don't 
know." She tried to smile. 

" I am quite myself," he said almost stiffly. " Was it 
not I who was wounded, and in the best part of me — my 
love for him ? Why should it not be the best part which 
answers it ? " He spoke with a kind of fierce calmness, 
as if he were endeavouring to be gentle and reasonable 
with her, and found it hard. 

" Is it the best part which tempts to vengeance ? " 
she asked wearily. 

" I fancied you were calling it that in your heart," he 
said with bitterness. " And if it were ? Did not Samson 
call on heaven for vengeance — that was his word — ' venge- 
ance on the Philistines,' and was he not richly answered ? 
Was he not given strength for it ? " 

" James," sire cried in despair, " how can I argue 
against such frightful sophistries ? " 

They were both in the tense mood in which the added 
word snaps the bond of friendship, of blood, of love itself. 

"You need not," he said, as he turned from her. 
" We have had more than enough of argument. It does 
not change my intention. I shall complete the sale in 
the morning." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 45 

He was about to leave the room, but she called : 

"James!" 

"Well?" 

"You must not." She caught her breath, and sat 
hastily upon the sofa. 

" Pshaw ! " 

" I tell you you must not. I — I will not have it. I 
have my — my rights, as well as you ; my rights as your 
wife who is to be. I will not have your property — my 
property — thrown away for a whim." 

He came toward her quickly. She shrank involun- 
tarily. Her face was white ; she set her teeth. 

" Do you mean that ? " 

She nodded painfully. 

" It would have been simpler to say so in the begin- 
ning — not to say honester," he said with slow bitterness. 
" You might have spared me the pain of knowing that 
you could promise to give it all up, when you thought 
yourself secure from being held to your word. You 
might have saved your sermons." 

It was like the agony of death to hear these things 
from him ; but she shut her lips, and bore it. If she 
spoke now, she knew that her tone must belie her words. 

" A moment ago you said," he went on coldly, "that 
you had nothing to gain. Pardon me if I say that you 
seem to have had much. It may make you sleep easier 
to-night, if I tell you that you have gained it." 

He put his hands to his head in bewilderment, caught 
up his hat, and, without a glance at her, left the room. 

Margaret rose, and closed the door behind him. She 
stood a long time at the window, trying not to cry. 



46 BENEFITS FORGOT. 



III. 



Eleven thousand feet above sea-level the dry air 
reaches the point of saturation with a kind of gasp and 
shiver. Philip Deed was sure of the storm, in the air 
half an hour before the clouds began to gather. It was 
the day on which he was to meet his father at Maverick ; 
and he had set forth in the morning from Pinon, where 
he had spent his unprofitable year in mining, planning 
to reach Bayles's Park by one o'clock, and to take the 
railway there for Maverick, where he expected to arrive 
in time for the wedding. Cutter, who also had failed in 
the mountains, and whose arrangements for the future 
were indefinite, was going to the wedding with Philip. 
His family had always known the Deeds in New York, 
and he and Philip were friends. 

The air grew moist, and the sky darkened as they put 
their horses at the ascent out of Laughing Valley, into 
which they had just come down from the other side. A 
mile up the trail they stopped on an eminence command- 
iug the valley, to look about. A ray of sunshine shot a 
half-hearted glance from behind the clouds brooding 
above the way they were to take. The ray was instantly 
swallowed up ; but the valley was swept by a momentary 
radiance, under which it started dazzlingly fresh and 
green, and took, the sudden gold on its face with a danc- 
ing quiver which almost excused its foolish name. 

The range of hills over which they had just come rose 
behind Laughing Valley City to the north. To the south 
the exit from the valley was through Eed Rock Caflon, 
between the narrow walls of which the Chepita fled roar- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 47 

ing. The sound reached them where they stood on their 
height at the edge of the caflon, above the scattered noises 
of the town, which at this hour (just before the three- 
o'clock shift at the mines) was as peaceful, and almost as 
noiseless, as if it had not been a city on all the maps. 

Where the Ohepita cast itself down out of the hills 
over Moshier's Rock, at the other end of the valley, they 
could vaguely see its white leap ; and then could follow 
its serene course through the town. Down at their feet 
they watched it go brawling into the canon. Quietly as 
it slipped through Laughing Valley City, the river gave 
a certain effect of life to the valley, which spread a vast 
green lawn at their feet, unbroken save by the huddle of 
buildings at its centre, and by the dumps of green or grey 
or red that marked the mines outside the town. The 
close-ranked mountains looked down from every side 
upon the young city; and the only apparent points of 
egress to the world without were those by which the river 
entered and left the valley — the cleft in the hills through 
which the Chepita hurled itself upon the fall, and the 
canon by which it swept away. 

Philip Deed was giving up his mining at Pinon be- 
cause his father wished it, not because he liked the easy 
prospect of a home and a bank-account held out to him 
from Maverick. The thing for which he actually cared 
was a life not responsible to its next minute — a life that 
should leave him altogether free to speculate with him- 
self. At twenty-three Philip Deed was an interesting 
subject for prophecy. It would surprise no one who 
knew him if he should turn out to be a great success — 
and this was Cutter's faith — but the betting was against 

it. He had a fine, straggling army of talents, and for 
4 



48 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

commander of them a gusty temper. The sound sense 
that would often bless him was for the most part present 
in the hours when he did not need it, and when he would 
not have been anything but sensible upon any temptation. 
He was wise upon impulse, and the propriety of his senti- 
ments in his best hours merely served to shame him when 
he was less wise : it did not establish a permanent state 
of wisdom in him. He made mistakes as other men are 
respectable, from instinct. He often had occasion to de- 
nounce himself passionately. He had a noble and un- 
thinking generosity, a warm heart, and a habit of taking 
people at their own valuation, and of owing more than 
he could pay. 

There was a generous touch even in Philip's incapacity 
— for it amounted to that — to perceive the delicate mo- 
ment at which meum melts into tuum. It was a kind of 
incapacity to infect an entire character, and it infected 
Philip's; at strange times and upon odd occasions the 
fibre for which one instinctively looked as the accompani- 
ment of other fine traits in him was missing : it was like 
a lacking sense, rather than a vice, as excellent people are 
absent-minded. It might nevertheless have been odious 
— Jasper said it tvas — if it had not been seen to be merely 
the obverse side of his generosity : what was his was yours, 
if you were his friend ; and it followed, as the kind of 
corollary to which no open-handed man would give a 
thought, that what was yours was his. Good-fellowship 
was like that ; it was one of the things that one did not 
question. One did not compel one's friend to ask for 
one's second coat when one's friend was shivering; one 
gave it, and asked no questions when the friend forgot to 
return it : that was the way of coats and friends. And 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 49 

when the need for a coat was one's own, it was a poor 
compliment to one's friend if one conld not trust him 
for as good an understanding of the transaction as one's 
own. 

Philip had never reasoned it out— it was not the sort 
of thing to reason about — but this was, in general terms, 
his instinct about the whole business of give and take. 
He had an entirely good conscience about his money deal- 
ings, and obligations of every sort. He knew that he 
borrowed more than he lent, but that was because the 
borrowers did not come to him early enough. When he 
received a sum of money there were always a dozen tedi- 
ous people who wanted it — people to whom he owed it : 
they got hold of it often before he could lend it to any of 
the half-dozen borrowers who usually hang about such a 
man. About certain obligations of honour he had as sen- 
sitive a pride as that of his father, who never owed any- 
body a penny ; but he would have postponed any ordinary 
debt to lend ten dollars to a friend in need, and he would 
have had no more scruple in putting the gratification of 
some wish of his own before it. It was, in fact, often a 
race between the wish and the creditor : the kind of wish 
that it took some time and trouble to gratify was an ad- 
vantage to the creditor. When the conditions were favour- 
able, he would often arrive first. In fine, upon principle 
and in practice, Philip was always generous before he 
was just. 

He would have found it difficult to explain his theory 
about the propriety of being generous to himself. It was 
involved in the foolish pride, not unlike a sense of caste, 
which had given him a belief, cherished in a careless way 
from his boyhood and now become an instinctive feeling 



50 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

in him, like a religion, that certain things were proper to 
him. Reduced to its obvious terms, it would have be- 
come, like a number of our more obstinate inner religions, 
an absurdity. Philip got along with his religion by not 
reducing it, by not so much as thinking of it. He acted 
upon it. Was it that certain insignia, a certain cere- 
monial, a peculiar dignity were an hereditary appanage 
of his station? But what was his station? If he had 
been brought to this, he would have urged that his station 
was to be Philip Deed, which might not be much, but 
was what it was. He could not pretend to explain. 

One of the more immediate results of this theory of 
the pre-eminence of the debt he owed permanently to 
himself above the accidental obligations incurred in pay- 
ing it, was that his unpaid bills in Pinon, over and above 
the money his father regularly sent him to run his mine, 
amounted to a trifle more than $400. The several small 
debts making up this sum began to be pressing, and he 
was glad to be leaving Pinon, not merely because the 
mines he had been working for himself and Jasper offered 
no prospect of yielding ore in paying quantities, but be- 
cause he saw no present means of paying these debts by 
his own exertions, and they had reached a point where it 
was inconvenient, and occasionally a little humiliating, to 
add to them. He meant to ask his father to lend him the 
money. He would be able to pay him in six months ; he 
knew where he could make twice $400 by that time ; and 
meanwhile he would pay him interest. He disliked to be 
borrowing from his father in the loose way he had used 
hitherto. They would make it a business transaction, 
and he should have his note. 

" Isn't that Pinon Mountain to the right of the big 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 51 

dome of Ute Chief ? " he asked, as they stood on their 
height, looking out over the hills. 

" Yes ; I make it out so," said Cutter. " Melancholy 
sight." 

" Yes — oh, yes," agreed Philip, heavily. " I've been 
thinking of our year up there : what an ass I made of 
myself dropping three or four hundred days into those 
holes in the ground on Mineral Hill ! " 

« Ugh ! " grunted Cutter. 

" They weren't much as days, of course, but they were 
the best I had at the time. They might have brought 
me in a clear ten thousand or so if I had set them to 
work bank-presidenting, or something. Why — think of 
it ! — a fellow might have married on the earnings of those 
days. And there they lie at the bottom of the ' Little Ci- 
pher ' and the ' Pay Ore.' ' Pay Ore ' ! " he exclaimed 
scornfully. "Happy thought of its fairy godmother, 
that name." 

" Well, I'm not banking heavily on the ' Little Cipher.' 
But it was luck enough for one day to locate the ' Pay 
Ore.' The Eyan outfit are going to have those days out 
of the ' Pay Ore,' you know, Deed. There's stuff in that 
claim." 

" Yes, I know," assented Philip, indifferently ; " low- 
grade stuff. I don't see how it helps me that it would 
pay to ship if it assayed three dollars better. It might as 
well be a thousand." 

" Wait a while. It will be a thousand — a thousand 
better than pay dirt." 

Philip made a contemptuous sound, but his contempt 
was outward only. He believed in the future of the " Pay 
Ore," now that money enough was to be put into it to 



52 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

sink the shaft to the proper depth, as men believe in the 
woman of their secret ideal — the woman whom they shall 
one day meet and love, but whose virtues it is unprofitable 
to discuss meanwhile. 

" That's all right," returned Cutter, unshakenly. " I've 
been down in the mine. Eyan's going to make a big stake 
out of his lease of the l Pay Ore.' Watch him and see. 
He might even take something out of the i Little Cipher.' 
He and Buckham know what they are about. Who sup- 
posed there was anything in the * Celestina ' until they 
took hold of it on a lease ? And now look at it. Why, 
they were saying in Pinon yesterday that the last assay 
gave a thousand dollars to the ton." 

" Pshaw, Cutter ! I am ashamed of that bargain with 
Eyan." 

His companion permitted himself to smile, " Well, you 
ought to be — the other way. You didn't get enough. 
Man alive, you don't suppose he and Buckham are here 
for their health. How many pairs of eyes do you think 
they need to see that you are next the ' Celestina,' and 
that the ' Pay Ore,' anyway, and perhaps the ' Little 
Cipher,' is a straight continuation of their lead?" He 
had raised his voice, but he lowered it to say: "Why, 
look here, Deed ; I'll tell you what I'll do : I'll stake my 
reputation as a mining engineer that they have struck 
a true fissure vein in the ' Celestina,' and that it dips 
your way." 

Philip laughed. " Your confidence is charming, Cut- 
ter — charming. If you will give me a note of introduc- 
tion to the person you have in mind who is prepared to 
furnish me with board and lodging in exchange for such 
confidence as that, I don't see what more I can ask." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 53 

The silence that fell between them recognized the 
existence of the subject they were shying away from. It 
was an hour since Philip had been handed his father's 
long telegram as they passed through Laughing Valley 
City. He had bit his lip, and turned it over to Cutter. 
They had found no words for it since, and were still try- 
ing to talk of other things. 

" I wonder if you'd mind, Deed, if I were to say what 
an awful cad that brother of yours seems to be," Cutter 
broke forth at last, while they still stood looking down 
into the valley from their eminence. 

Philip ground his teeth. 

" Hardly ; it saves me the trouble. Oh," he cried, 
venting the feeling he had been choking back in a help- 
less shout of rage, " to think of his coming it over father 
and me like that ! Confound it, I believe I could have 
stood being swindled out of my whole future, and have 
managed to pull a decent face about it, if he had done it 
like a gentleman. But this — ! The thing's so dirty, so 
small, so sneaking ! Why, Cutter, it's the grade of mid- 
night assassination. Fancy father ! The favourite son ! " 
He gave a scornful little laugh, and dashed his hand to 

his eyes. " D the fellow, anyway ! " he cried. " I 

swear, when I think of it, it seems too low a thing for any 
one who has a drop of my father's blood in him to have 
done. I wasn't old enough when my mother died to 
know her intimately, but I don't believe she was like that. 
And to think that I have spent a year in those cursed 
mountains up at Pinon, working that mine for him right 
alongside my own ; rising early and going to bed late ; 
giving up every Christian habit; denying myself every 
kind of decency of living — yes, forgetting how it might 



54 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

feel to live like a gentleman ; and all of it just as much, 
every ounce as much, for his infernal mine as for my own ; 
and I get this for it. I tell you, Cutter, some things turn 
you sour. The beastly ingratitude of the thing makes me 
so sick that I can't kick against it. I haven't any kick 
left in me. I believe some day, when I am cooler about 
it, I shall be sorry for the fellow for being such a devil of 
a cad. And to think that he is my brother — yes, and my 
father's son ! " 

" Pshaw ! He'll never stick to that point, Deed. It's 
too indecent." 

"Won't he!" cried Philip. "You've got a lot to 
learn about Jasper. He'll not only stick to it, but he'll 
prove that he's right. And what's more, he will think so 
himself. Jasper wouldn't do anything he didn't think 
right. He'll think it right if it chokes him. He has 
done the right thing, and done it at the right time, ever 
since I can remember ; and I've always admired it in him. 
A man can't help admiring a quality so remote from him- 
self as that, you know," he said bitterly. " Jasper isn't 
the kind of fool to chuck away a year in a place like 
Pinon. He knows better, and I respect him for it. His 
discretion and propriety, that habit of his of doing the 
wise and sensible thing while I was lucklessly going to 
some new style of dogs every six months or so, and disap- 
pointing my father — you can't think, Cutter, what an im- 
pression that makes on a younger brother. Jasper's very 
schoolmasters used to praise him, and even then I knew 
they were right, and that I had earned my stool in a cor- 
ner for shirked lessons. As early as that he had a sort of 
instinct for the buttered side of life, and you see he hasn't 
forgotten it. You ought to have played marbles with a 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 55 

boy for * keeps ' to really understand a man, you know, 
Cutter." 

" Oh, come ! " said Cutter. " His habit of being right 
isn't going to help him to hold that ranch against your 
claim. Your father will have him out of that before we 
get to Maverick. Jasper isn't the only man who knows 
law." 

" Humph ! Poor father ! " sighed Philip. He lighted 
a cigarette. " He won't have much heart left for law, I'm 
afraid. His way is a quicker way. I can't think what 
would have happened to Jasper if he had told that to 
father instead of writing it. Like him to use a letter for 
it ! Father doesn't bear things well, you know. They 
make him wild, just at first. It's part of Jasper's discre- 
tion that he knew better than to stand up and tell him 
such a thing. I believe father would have had to kill 
him." 

" And that is the kind of man you think likely to sit 
down under such an injury .and twirl his thumbs?" 

" Hardly. He won't be sitting down. He will be 
raging about. But it won't do him any good. We've only 
got the barest facts ; but you can figure out a good deal 
if one of your known quantities is character ; and if you 
know Jasper's character you may be sure that he's behind 
the strongest kind of fortress, if it comes to that. The 
law can't touch him, I'll wager. Jasper always knows 
what he is about ; he's got his earthworks piled sky high. 
You might as well try to storm that cliff over there." 
He pointed to the sheer lift of rock opposite them. " It 
would be a pity, I'm sure, if a man's going to abuse a 
trust, if he shouldn't make a good job of it. Poor father ! 
That's what cuts him up, I know. He trusted the fellow, 



56 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

you see. Trusted him ! Heavens ! He loved him ! 
Pshaw ! Let's talk of something else, Cutter. "What's 
become of your trouble ? Come, I don't want to monop- 
olize all the fun. Tell me, old fellow," he said, laying 
his hand on the other's shoulder ; " do you hear any- 
thing?" 

Cutter bit an end off the cigarette he had just lighted, 
and nibbled at the tendrils of tobacco nervously. He 
glanced with a vengeful look at the stony wall opposite, 
as he cast the cigarette out into the air, and watched it 
fall in a wavering line into the canon, a thousand feet be- 
neath them. " No ; nothing," he answered at last. 

" And you want to ? " 

" Want to? You don't suppose I have any will about 
it, do you ? A man in love, as you may find out some 
day, Deed, is away past ' want ' and ' not want.' It's all 
< must.' " 

" Yes," admitted Philip, sententiously ; " it's been de- 
scribed to me that way. But one would say — " 

" Of course they would ; and awfully easy it is to say, 
when it's somebody else, and the girl doesn't happen to 
be the archetype of girlhood, and the one maiden arranged 
for you from the beginning of time, and possessed of the 
only smile and the only droop of eyelid you have any use 
at all for, and all the rest of it. They babble about the 
happiness of love until a man has to try it, as he tries 
smoking, because it seems at the time about the most in- 
teresting experience one can buy ; but it is a good deal 
like the smoking when you have taken a puff or two at 
it : your cigar lias a Havana wrapper, ' as advertised ' ; 
it's the Hoboken filler that breaks you up." 

Philip roared at the gloomy face with which Cutter 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 57 

said this ; but his companion's countenance kept its rue- 
fulness. 

It was a year since Cutter's easy life had been given a 
violently new twist by Elsa Berrian's refusal of him. He 
had left New York immediately after, in a passion of 
rage, humiliation, and love, and his hurt was still fresh in 
him. 

The day on which she refused him held more instruc- 
tion for Cutter about the constitution of human society 
than he had gathered in the entire preceding twenty-four 
years. Perhaps most men can look back to such days, 
when life closed about them with a kind of rigour, and 
they fought their way through the desperate view of the 
excessive and useless hardness of things (which suggested 
suicide as a natural and not unpicturesque remedy) to the 
mixed doggedness and pluck that enabled them to rise 
next morning, and have a try, at least, at the inexorability 
of Fate. Cutter, when he had tasted the dregs of this 
species of learning, was, to his own sense, a stalking re- 
pository of melancholy wisdom. 

He had thought his misery must make all things indif- 
ferent. But when he snatched at Philip's suggestion that 
he should go West with him, he had not supposed it would 
be so unlike New York. He had what he called his " pro- 
fession " — he had studied mining engineering for two 
years at Columbia — but the demand for his inexperience 
at Pinon left him plenty of time to wish he had not been 
in such a hurry to leave a life which was arranged for 
him, and which he understood, for the crude West. His 
dissatisfaction may not have been altogether unconnected 
with the fact that at home he had been a young man 
about town with a rich father, who did not object to his 



58 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

idling until he should have found the thing he wanted to 
do ; while at Pinon every one was a worker, and was 
grossly, even brutally, intolerant of any one who was not. 

He was going to stay a year, though. He was resolved 
upon that. He would have felt it to be a confession that 
he lacked " sand " to give it up earlier ; and he was 
really too heart-sick about Elsa to be able to think with 
patience of revisiting New York for a long time to come. 
It ended in his forcing his habit of laziness into regular 
application to such business as found its way to him, and, 
for the first time, he began to study mining engineering 
in earnest. 

He felt, after a few months of life in Pinon, as if he 
had " had a great deal of nonsense knocked out of him." 
He liked the outdoor life, and, when he could keep the 
old Cutter under, he got along fairly well with the men 
with whom his business brought him in contact. But it 
was perhaps because, after all, he could not help letting 
them see that he could imagine nobler, not to say more 
interesting, examples of the race than they, that he was a 
failure at Piflon, when all was said. 

It was not quite his fault. It was not to be expected 
that he should at once be able to rid himself of the New 
York theory of life ; and that, other things being equal 
(though other things had a hard time of it to be equal 
under such conditions), a man should not seem somehow 
a better man to whom such words as Wallack's, Daly's, 
Del's, the Union League, the Academy, Brown's, suggested 
the same host of associations that they suggested to him. 
This was, of course, no more than the deathless and in- 
vincible New York conceit, which amuses the country at 
all times ; but it was perhaps dearer to him than to the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 59 

usual New Yorker, because he had for a number of years 
had nothing better to do than to foster it. It was his mis- 
fortune that he had somewhat less than the usual tact, 
which helps other New Yorkers to cloak their sense of an 
obvious superiority ; but it was happily his luck not to be 
a snob in any sense or degree. 

Philip, who had long since accepted the West, and 
whose direct habit of thought removed him from the 
temptation of remaining the critical outsider who analyzes 
the situation it is his main duty to be living, was never 
tired of making game of Cutter's crude struggles to be 
crude, and of his habit of pettifogging with his temporary 
Western lot. He had been accustomed to defend him 
when he was ridiculed in Pinon ; but in the privacy of 
the cabin which the two occupied together on Mineral 
Hill, he guyed Cutter's amusing fopperies as much as the 
camp could have desired. Cutter continued to apply his 
daintiness to the coarse exigencies of Western life with a 
smile, and good-humouredly went on being in his dress the 
most elegant rowdy that ever was. He was a picturesque 
figure when in full regalia, with his fire-new chapereros, 
his nickel-plated spurs, his spotless sombrero, on which he 
kept a fresh leather band at all times, his English riding- 
boots, and his crop. His revolver was of the latest make, 
and his cartridge-belt looked as if he never used it. 

Cutter's faults, like this little foible of his, were for the 
most part on the surface. Beneath them all he was as 
simple, honest, and manly as any one need be ; and men 
who had need of a loyal friend sought Lenox Cutter. The 
self-confidence, which was not quite conceit, and the touch 
of selfishness which went with it, were of that not too in- 
sistent sort which women are accustomed to the need of 



60 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

condoning in the men of their acquaintance daily, and 
which men — because they know how much of both quali- 
ties a man needs to earn a living — are accustomed to tol- 
erate so long as the like qualities in themselves are not 
trodden upon. 

The clouds had been gathering while they talked, and 
hung, a threatening black bank, in the west as Cutter, 
turning away from Philip's laugh, glanced at them. 

" We are going to catch it," he said. " Shall we go 
on?" 

Philip put out his hand from his pony to test the air. 
The harsh damp that had fallen on the day made itself 
felt between his interrogating thumb and forefinger. 

" I must, you know. They will be looking for me 
at Maverick to-day. I couldn't risk being snowed up 
down there in Laughing Valley City for a week or two. 
But you must wait, Cutter. There's nothing to hurry 
you." 

" Pshaw, we shall get to Bayles's Park before the fun 
begins. Anyway, we'll see it out together, unless you want 
to get rid of me." 

" You're a brick, Cutter ; but you'd better stay. I am 
going to have company, whether or no, I think." He 
nodded towards the town. " Down the trail there — do you 
see ? " 

Cutter, following the direction of his nod, saw a large 
crowd of men on horseback issuing from the town, which, 
a few moments earlier, had seemed depopulated. They 
had just passed the last group of cabins, on the outskirts 
of the settlement, and were riding at a canter up the first 
rise of the long hill which the young men had climbed 
half-way. In the still air the talk of the company rose 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 61 

loudly. It was plain that an unusual event had called 
them forth. 

" Let's have the glass," said Cutter, suddenly. " Fact ! " 
he exclaimed, after a moment. " There's a young girl 
among them, riding alongside the tall fellow in front. 
See ? " 

Philip took the glass Cutter handed him, and scanned 
the party. " By Jove ! " He studied the shouting throng 
anxiously for a moment. " I don't more than half like 
the look of that crowd, Cutter. The girl— why, man, 
she's—" 

" Rather ! See how she bears herself at the head of 
that crazy lot. A lady ? She's a queen." 

" Yes," assented Deed, musingly, while he kept the 
glass upon the moving group. " But the man in the cen- 
tre — what do you make of him ? " 

"Which?" asked Cutter, taking the glass. "The 
clerical-looking chap ? " 

" Yes ; I thought he looked like a clergyman." 

" He is, too, by George. See here, Deed, there's going 
to be a circus here of some sort. We'll have to see this 
thing out." 

Philip nodded. "Do you notice how all the gestures 
point his way ; and how they seem to be shouting at him, 
and keeping him in the centre, while he sits his horse with- 
out a word. Do you know, I believe lids the row." 

Cutter's restless pony would not stand while he turned 
the glass on the crowd again. He got oif, and, putting 
an arm through the rein, made an attentive observation. 

" It can't be," he said at length. 

"What?" 

" That they are running him out of town." 



62 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Why, my dear fellow, it fits in perfectly with all 
you're in the habit of pretending you believe about the 
cloth." 

" Stuff ! I never said they were rascals," said Cutter, 
keeping the glass to his eyes. He put the glass down, and 
remounted. 

"What do you make of the girl's relation to him ? " 
asked Philip after a moment. 

" Oh, daughter, I suppose. She doesn't look as if she 
belonged to any of the rest of the mob." 

" Careful there, Cutter ; careful ! " He was straining 
his eyes through the glass. " Some of them may be Eng- 
lishmen. In fact, I think I see a viscount. That's no 
way to speak of the imported article." 

The group was coming within easy eye-shot. A shout 
that went up at the moment sounded close by. 

"The imported article has a domestic howl," said 
Cutter. 

" Yes ; and it's getting precious near. We mustn't let 
them find us studying them." 

With one of the silent twitches of the rein understood 
by cattle-ponies, they put their horses into a canter, and 
passed out of sight of the crowd by a turn in the trail, 
which writhed about the hill until, near the summit, it 
pushed forth in the direction of their journey, and be- 
gan to find its way loftily along the walls of Eed Eock 
Canon. The winding trail brought them in a moment to 
a point just above that which they had left, and, looking 
down from behind a pile of rocks shielding them from 
observation, they saw the party halted there. It was a 
shaggy mob, not carrying out in its dress its suggested 
English birth and breeding. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. (53 

It seemed to be made up of all classes of the town's 
population. Those in the group at the left, with clay- 
grimed trousers stuffed in their boots, were from the 
mines, and, in one or two instances, the candles which 
they had apparently neglected to put down in their haste 
were carried by the steel hooks upon their fingers. The 
two wearing white shirts (the rest were clothed in the 
flannel of the West) had a hard look, and might be gam- 
blers. The shopkeepers, who had come along to see the 
fun, were to be distinguished by the eccentricity of allow- 
ing their trousers to drape themselves outside their boots. 
There were a couple of cow-boys, with chapereros, spurs, 
and sombreros, and with lariats coiled about their saddle- 
pommels. Most of the crowd carried their weapons in 
sight. Some of the revolvers were to be seen peeping 
from saddle-holsters. The cow-boys wore their " guns " 
in cartridge-belts about their waists. It was a threaten- 
ing-looking lot ; yet, when the leader drew his fat black 
revolver from his belt, and began to toy with it, his play- 
ful use of it seemed merely a waggish substitute for the 
hems and haws of other public speakers. 

The crowd, grouping itself about him, arraigned the 
clergyman before them, and somewhat apart (still on his 
horse), with that eye for the scenic and dramatic which 
plays its unconscious share in all the extra-legal functions 
assumed by the people in the country beyond the Missis- 
sippi. The tone in which the leader addressed the clergy- 
man was peremptory, certainly ; but his address had its 
humorous moments, and once — when, from the pitch of 
his voice, the listeners above guessed that he was bur- 
lesquing the hortatory clerical manner — the guffaw greet- 
ing the bit of farce showed how the sovereign people may 



64 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

find rewards even in the solemn and painful duty of ad- 
ministering justice. Philip watched the scene intently. 
" We shall have to take a hand in this," he whispered at 
last. " They mean to lynch him." 

" No, no," answered Cutter, under his breath ; " the 
leader is beginning on a set of resolutions. They don't 
resolve at lynching-bees ; they act. Besides, what would 
they be doing with the girl ? They are running him out." 

Philip said nothing, but glanced thoughtfully at the 
clouds, which had been folding hill after hill while they 
waited, and had now totally obscured the mountains, 
which, in fair weather, seemed so near Laughing Valley 
City that it appeared at times as if one might touch them 
by stretching out one's hand. The vapour scurried close 
above them. They knew that their own hill must be out 
of sight from the town. The air grew chillier. 

" Perhaps they might better lynch him," said Philip, 
at length. "Do you remember when they ran that tin- 
horn gambling outfit out of Pinon ? It was just such a 
day as this has been — all sun until ten o'clock. You sur- 
veyed the ' Little Cipher ' and the ' Pay Ore ' for me that 
morning, and the weather couldn't have been fairer. But 
how it got its back up after they were escorted out of 
camp ! It wasn't an hour before the town was trying to 
find itself." 

" Yes," admitted Cutter. « It snowed." 

" Snowed ? You couldn't see the electric lights until 
you ran against the poles. And those fellows, wandering 
towards shelter in that storm, without a horse, and with 
no telegraph-poles to guide them to Castaway Springs — I 
know, you always say the vigilance committee couldn't 
suppose ifc was going to snow. But when they brought 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 65 

the bodies in the week after — do you remember ? — it was 
awful to see the camp find its conscience. Absolutions 
would have had a livelier sale than whiskey in Pinon, that 
day, I've often thought." 

"The wind isn't right for an old-fashioned blizzard 
to-day," said Cutter, divining his thought. " You and I 
and the minister will get through all right if they'll only 
start him ; but they'll have to get a move on soon." 

" I wasn't thinking of him," said Philip. 

" Why, great heaven ! Deed, you don't suppose they 
are going to send her along ? " 

" Send her ? No. But she'll do what she likes, I 
think ; and you don't believe she'll desert her father, do 
you?" 

Deed took the glass from its case again, and directed 
it to where the girl stood withdrawn at a considerable 
distance, out of ear-shot, gazing on the scene with a face 
of anxious misery. He had not seen her closely before. 
She seemed a young girl. She might be twenty or twenty- 
one, not more. 

" By Jove ! " he exclaimed, in a low tone. 

Cutter took the glass he offered. " She is pretty," he 
admitted. 

" Pretty ! " cried Philip. 

Cutter smiled. " Well, do you want to go down and 
rescue her? I'm with you." 

"From what? Don't you see what delicate consid- 
eration and courtesy they use towards her ? See the tall 
one standing guard over her privacy with averted eyes. 
And didn't you notice, as they came up the hill, how first 
one and then another would ride forward to see if there 
was anything he could do for her? Why, those fellows 



QQ BENEFITS FORGOT. 

are knights, you know, Cutter, when it comes to regard 
for a woman — especially a woman above them. By George, 
she has an air ! " He spent a long moment watching her 
through the glass. " She is the princess they treat her 
like ; and she can unbend, too. See the gracious smile 
she gives her subject-captor — the tall fellow. He's been 
offering to fetch her an ice from the north pole, and she 
has declined, with the sort of grace that makes denial a 
favour." 

The leader folded the paper from which he had been 
reading the resolutions, and stuck it in his belt. Philip, 
turning his glass on the minister, caught the glance of 
uneasy scorn with which he awaited the next, movement 
of his persecutors. It was violent only in its sarcasm: 
they lifted their wide-brimmed hats as one man, and made 
way for him to pass. The unanimity and silence with 
which this was accomplished would have been impressive 
if it had not been rather laughable. The minister winced, 
but straightened himself immediately on his horse, and 
rode by the ordeal of the row of eyes, fixed contemptuously 
upon him, with proudly lifted head. Jack Devine, the 
leading saloon-keeper of the town, bridled in imitation of 
his haughty carriage, and a smile ran about. The minis- 
ter continued to look before him, implying his indifference 
as well as he might by the walk out of which he scorned 
to press his horse. The crowd seemed under the spell of 
its own silence, and no jeer broke from it until the minis- 
ter had passed the last man, and was on his way up the 
hill. 

A jocose stone or two pursued him amid the derisive 
yells that now rose, and one of the group, creeping nimbly 
up behind, smote the horse resoundingly with a cudgel. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 67 

The beast gave a snorting bound, and leaped forward up 
the steep at a gallop. The clergyman's hat — an English 
parson's wideawake — was blown from his head by the 
sudden movement, and his dignity was scattered upon 
the wind which wafted it from him towards the crowd, 
and which blew his thin locks out behind as the horse 
scampered up the uneven ascent, reckless of rocks and 
turns. 

Philip had seen the girl's streaming eyes as she started 
to follow him and was gently withheld ; and now he saw 
her dry her tears with a start of indignation, and point 
imperiously to the flying hat. The tall young man beside 
her made after it, and returned it humbly to her. She 
nodded her thanks, and at the same moment, with a dex- 
terous hand, wheeled her horse, and with a smart touch 
of the whip set off at a run after her father. 

The thing was done so quickly that no one had time 
to interfere, and all stood gazing stupidly after her for a 
moment. Then the tall young man gave his pony the 
spur, and followed her. His animal's clattering hoofs on 
the rocks urged her horse on, and he did not overtake her 
until she was rounding the summit on which the young 
men awaited, unseen, the issue of the scene below. He 
appeared to entreat her ; she shook her head vigorously, 
and put his hand down from her rein with a firm but 
not unkind briskness. She gave him a smile through 
her tears, and he rode on with her. 

The young men followed. It had begun to snow. 



G8 BENEFITS FORGOT. 



IV. 

The Eev. G-eorge Maurice's difficulty with the vigi- 
lance committee at Laughing Valley City was the climax 
of the ill will which began to show itself against him in 
the town a month or two after his arrival there from his 
last parish, in Dakota. He had failed with these people 
not merely because he lacked the cardinal virtue of the 
West, adaptability, though certainly he was tactless 
enough, and would often rasp the sensibilities of those 
whom he would willingly have pleased. Nor had he 
failed altogether because he was arbitrary and dictatorial ; 
no doubt his congregation could have borne that cheer- 
fully from a man they respected — indeed it is not certain 
that they might not have liked him the better for being a 
bit of a bully. 

If they had been asked to lay a finger on the source of 
their dissatisfaction with him, they would probably have 
had to own that they couldn't. However, that was not a 
thing to make them less dissatisfied. In fact, he was one 
of the men to whom it would be a pleasure to attribute 
something forgivable — like a definite sin. Perhaps it was 
his indefinite weakness that was unpardonable. 

One might say, for example, as certain people did, 
that he was not too scrupulous about money matters ; but 
it could not truthfully be said that he was unscrupulous. 
It might be alleged that he did light things, unbecoming 
his cloth ; but his behaviour was never clearly unseemly. 
He could easily be proved lacking in consideration for 
others, or, if one liked, — and there were usually several 
who liked, — for his daughter ; yet when one would say 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 69 

" selfish," the remembrance of a reckless act of generosity 
would recall itself, or the recollection of the strain of self- 
sacrifice in him, declaring itself in acts that enslaved to 
him those whom they helped, and endeared him to a fol- 
lowing among the young of all his parishes ; and condem- 
nation was laid by the heels. 

Maurice did not pretend to be perfect. If he had 
made any such pretense he would, for instance, have felt 
bound to bury Carstarphen and Telfner when they died 
of smallpox, which had been brought to Laughing Valley 
City by a party of Chinamen. Like other miners, the 
men had lived in disregard of every sanitary precaution ; 
no measures had been taken for disinfecting the cabin in 
which they had died, and to go to it to read the 
burial service over them and then to accompany their 
bodies to the grave, on the side of Carbonate Mountain, 
two miles from town, was, as a matter of fact, a serious 
risk. It was unfortunate that those duties of a minister 
of the gospel, which, in personal experience of them, one 
must of course qualify a trifle, should be so simply con- 
ceived by the friends of the dead men. His refusal to 
perform the last office for the men, though made with 
the proper reluctance and regret, and reasoned cogently, 
was taken extremly ill. 

The miners who had come to ask his services as the 
only minister in town " cursed him out," as they after- 
wards told the indignation meeting. It was at this meet- 
ing that the resolutions were adopted, in which the word 
" coward " occurred six times exclusive of the indignant 
preamble. 

The resolutions, which, after the received custom, gave 
him twenty-four hours to leave town, expressly excepted 



70 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

his daughter ; and the ladies of the place had arranged 
among themselves to keep her by them, and to look after 
her, with the purpose of sending her after her father, if 
she should desire to go, when he should be settled some- 
where. Carelessly enough, this plan had reckoned with- 
out Dorothy's energetic will, it was found, when the time 
came ; and they let her go with the band that escorted 
him to the edge of the town because she very quietly 
would have it so, not imagining it necessary to extract a 
promise from her to go no further. 

Dick Messiter (a young man whom the ladies knew to 
have a mill-owning father somewhere in Massachusetts, 
and whose occupation at Laughing Valley City was that 
of Superintendent of Cincinnati Mining Co. -No. 3) had 
offered to go along and look after her ; and in spite of 
the lamentable occasion of the association of the two 
young people under these conditions, the circumstance 
gratified that dumb novelist, or perhaps it is merely ro- 
mancer, which seems to lurk in every woman's breast. It 
struck the ladies of the town as a beautiful situation, and 
they would have been the last to interpose an obstacle to 
the crisis which is somewhere towards the tops of every 
situation. 

They trembled appropriately for the clergyman when 
he was led out in the midst of the shouting mob, and 
they exchanged the observation that they ought not to 
have thought of such a thing as letting her go, when they 
saw her riding among the noisiest of them. It would 
have been hard if they could not assuage their remorse 
by the suggestive spectacle of Dick and the girl riding 
side by side up the hill. If one looked at the matter 
from this standpoint, it was clear that the mob could not 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 71 

be too noisy; and it was even to be hoped that, in a 
harmless way, it might prove obstreperous : it would be a 
pretty opportunity for Dick. 

The trail over which Philip and Cutter followed the 
three riders clambered difficultly along the walls of Red 
Rock Canon ; or sometimes it would dip into it, or wander 
quite out of it, and take its way along the table-land 
above. Bayles's Park, where they were to find the train 
for Maverick, and where the railway terminated for the 
present, lay in one of those green and sheltered hollows, 
in the penetralia of the hills, known to Colorado vocabu- 
laries as a park. For a good part of the year, the parks — 
which are a kind of small paradise to the traveller who 
comes down into them out of the mountains — keep a 
spring festival, and if any one supposes that there are 
hill-gnomes, he must be sure that it is on these fresh and 
flower-starred lawns that they hold their revels. At all 
events, the hills water and refresh them, as if they would 
keep their ball-room bright — or perhaps it is with the 
hospitable thought of maintaining one guest-chamber 
among their unfriendly rocks ; and every mountain trav- 
eller knows how to praise the shelter it offers. 

Bayles's Park was still well-nigh a two hours' journey 
forward, however, and the snow had begun to fly more 
thickly. The noiseless coming of the storms in which men 
and beasts are lost in these mountains is their most awful 
effect : one could die more easily, one feels, in the worst 
riot of tempest. The snow fell silently about them as 
they rode, piling the folds of their greatcoats, and their 
ponies' flanks, with its stealthy increase. The wind, 
which blindingly blew the flakes in their faces, was smit- 
ten soundless by the solid curtain of white through which 



72 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

it passed to reach them. The world was filled with snow 
and silence. It had grown very cold. 

There are often such snow-flurries in the mountains, 
and then, in a few moments, sunshine again. Philip and 
Cutter consulted with each other, and did not believe it 
would last ; but they agreed that it should make no differ- 
ence if it did. They could not turn back and leave those 
in advance to take their chances, even if Philip was ready 
to give up the wedding. So people will agree while their 
feet are still warm ; and they pushed on doggedly, as the 
fall grew heavier. 

The telegraph line followed the trail, save when, at 
rare times, led on stubby iron poles, it would go forward, 
for the sake of a short cut, in a dizzy run over the rocks 
jutting from the cliff above them. Where the poles were 
set along their path they were higher, and when the snow 
was most blinding it was still easy to make out the road 
by them. But the poles were presently less plain, and 
the sullen murmur of the Chepita, rising steadily from 
the chasm which opened at the outer edge of the trail, a 
measureless void, warned them to use their eyes before 
they used the reins with which they would sometimes 
guide the horses. 

" Look sharp, there, Deed ! " shouted Cutter, sud- 
denly ; and Philip withheld his pony in time to save him- 
self from the gulf. 

The pony backed in terror, and when Philip got him 
started forward again, Cutter's horse refused to budge. 
Cutter alighted, and led him. The animal came forward 
reluctantly, cowering at each step, and eying the way be- 
fore him doubtfully. The snow-fall appeared suddenly 
to grow more dense, and the river, down at the bottom of 



BENEFITS FORGOT. f3 

the cation, which had marched with them until now to a 
soothing melody, seemed suddenly to shake itself free 
from the silence of which it had been part and to give 
forth a muffled roar and shout. 

Cutter looked back for a sight of Philip's face. He 
could touch his pony's nose, but the rider was a vague 
spectre. Cutter gave a prolonged shout. 

" Hello-o-o-o-o ! " 

They were not three paces from each other, but he 
could not be sure whether the answer was an echo or 
Philip's voice. He pressed his pony back against Philip's. 
They caught at each other's hands as the animals came 
together. 

" I was afraid of this," said Cutter, hoarsely, with the 
fear which we find after the event. 

" Yes," answered Philip. 

The frightful huddle and scurry of the big flakes 
came between them, as they peered in each other's faces, 
and their voices reached each other dully out of the pall 
of snow. 

" Think of those people ! " said Philip, after a mo- 
ment, in which they let their horses stand. " Think of 
that girl ! " 

" Hellish ! " muttered Cutter, who had had no com- 
ment for the business while they watched it. 

" Come on ! " said Philip, briefly, and Cutter under- 
stood. It was true ; they must find them. And at the 
moment they heard a vague sound, like voices, in ad- 
vance. 

Philip's pony would not move quickly enough, and he 
threw himself off, and jerked him forward. 

" You heard ? " he asked of Cutter. 



?4 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Yes." 

They pressed forward, and presently came upon the 
group halted in the middle of the trail, bending over the 
girl, who had been taken from her horse, and was being 
plied with brandy by the tall young man. Her father, 
who was rubbing her ears with snow, would raise his eyes 
from time to time desperately, frowning and blinking at 
the storm. 

She had not fainted. She was merely exhausted by 
the storm, and numbed by the cold. The spirits seemed 
to restore her. She looked up at sound of the shout of 
greeting with which Philip and Cutter made their 
presence known, and descried their figures. 

" My horse," she murmured to Messiter, who was 
stooping over her ; and he and her father raised her up, 
and set her on her pony, while Philip put himself at the 
animal's head. 

Philip shouted something in Messiter's ear as he came 
around in front of her animal to take his own by the rein. 

" To be sure ! " answered the girl's cavalier. " Hadn't 
thought of it." 

Messiter did not catch what Philip added, but here- 
plied to the question he guessed in his voice : " Yes ; near 
here. I know the place well enough when the weather 
hasn't got the blind staggers. Blast the snow ! " he 
shouted, rubbing his eyebrows and mustache, and mopping 
the little segment of face which showed between his high 
muffler and low-fitting cap. " Brown's Canon, don't they 
call it?" 

He was near enough to see Philip's nod. 

" A cut in the rock, and the cave just inside of it ? 
Beyond the Fif th Cascade ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 75 

" That's the place," said Philip. 

They set forward for it without delay, each leading 
his own horse, except that Philip took Messiter's besides 
his own, while Messiter led the girl's. Cutter, who did 
not know the cave, brought up the rear with the clergy- 
man, who made no attempt to hide from him his disap- 
proval of the storm and of the entire situation. Cutter 
had never heard such pleasant-hearted, even mellow 
grumbling. The man had a charm of manner which one 
felt through the snow itself. In front, the two young 
men discussed the whereabouts of the cleft in the rocks 
(which was known as a cafion, for no very good reason), 
and of the cave. About the place itself Philip knew best, 
having bunked in the cave for a night, when he had come 
over the pass the year before, on his way to Pinon ; but 
his companion was much more familiar with the trail. 

They went peeringly forward, dragging the trembling 
horses. There was always an uncertain moment after 
they had lost sight of one telegraph pole, and before they 
could make out the next; and at these times they felt 
cautiously along the rocky wall that soared into the air 
on the inside of the trail, and did not venture toward the 
outer edge. The horses tried each step inquiringly before 
taking it, and the two men in the lead, advancing into 
the unknown with such courage as they might, would 
often pause to take counsel with each other's ignorance 
and helplessness. It was impossible to say where any- 
thing was in this night of snow ; all of their world was that 
next step which they could see ; and that step might always 
plunge them into the world which no man has seen at any 
time. Somehow the cold seemed to numb the thought, 
by sympathy with the bodily pain and bewilderment 



76 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

which intense cold brings. The girl, who had not their 
resource of motion, was crying in silent agony from it, 
Philip saw, when he made way at a turn in the path for the 
young man to lead her horse by him ; and he pressed his 
flask of whisky into her hands. They were so cold, and the 
men's mittens she had drawn over her gloves so clumsy, 
that she almost dropped it; Philip caught it up as it 
slipped from her, and, shouting to his companion to hold 
on, asked her by a motion to raise her veil, and, pulling 
himself by a jutting boulder to her level, put the flask to 
her lips. She was very pale, and the smile she extorted 
from herself for thanks was pitiful. 

Sometimes the trail turned sharp corners, and once 
they found themselves at the edge of the precipice, and 
the cry of the river leaped up to them through the storm 
with a sudden loudness. The two in advance shuddered 
back from the sound, clutching at each other, and feeling 
blindly through the swirl toward the cliff on which their 
lives hung. Shouldered firmly against the wall once more, 
they paused for a weary and discouraged moment to shake 
off the snow, and to take heart for another venture into 
the awful mystery of white. 

The death which might lie before them was certain 
where they stood, from snow and cold, and at last they 
dared question the wall again with advancing hands. 
Philip was sure the canon and its cave could not be far. 
But the storm created its own far and near. Ten paces 
were far : one might have to lie down and give up the 
fight at the end of them ; the second step was not near : 
one might never take it. The wind had risen to a gale, 
the cold searched their veins, and their limbs began to 
answer their wills uncertainty. It was time they found 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 77 

shelter. One of the horses stumbled, and could not rise 
until Cutter felt his way back along the bridle-rein and 
helped him up ; but when he tugged at the reins again 
the pony would not move. 

" We shall have to give the poor beast up, I'm afraid," 
he said. Philip went back, and spoke a heartening word 
to the pony, — it had belonged to him in the mountains, — 
and the animal came along for a few paces, and stopped 
again, when it became necessary to repeat the action. 

It was all done in silence. For half an hour no one 
had spoken, when Philip shouted, " The Cascade ! " and 
as they halted to listen, there reached their ears remotely, 
as if from a great distance, the steady, down-beating pour 
of a waterfall. The sound triumphed over the clamoring 
river and the loud-breathing wind, though it seemed so 
far away ; and hope blessed them again. 

When the wall opened at last to their weary hands, 
and discovered the canon and, a moment later, the cave, 
they had just strength enough left among them to get 
the girl from her horse and to set her within the cavern. 
They sank about her exhausted when they saw her safe, 
and for a long time lay powerless to help her or one 
another. 

Philip was the first to find his feet. 

" Here, Cutter, stop that ! Wake up ! " he cried. 
Cutter was dozing in the dangerous sleep in which men 
die from cold. He shook him violently. 

" Let me alone ! " grunted Cutter ; but Philip caught 
him up, and seated him against one of the walls of the 
cave. 

" Wake up ! Do you hear ? " 

" Oh, come off ! " exclaimed Cutter, drowsily. 



78 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" See here, do you want your head banged against 
these rocks ? They're sharp, I warn you ! " 

Cutter started awake. He cast a listless glance over 
the cavern, which was high and spacious, with boulders 
scattered about the floor. The roof and sides were 
toothed and rutted, and showed everywhere sharp points 
of rock, at sight of which Cutter rubbed his head rue- 
fully and, having found a smile, knew himself again. 
" Got a match ? " he asked. 

" No ; but I think you have." 

" Fact." He fumbled for the silver match-case, with 
the figure of the humorous young demon atop, which 
was one of the relics of his Eastern career as a young 
man about town. 

" Good ! " said Philip, energetically. " Then we'll 
have a fire ! There's a sort of room just back round the 
curve in the rock there, unless I am out of my bearings, 
and a thing Hicks and Baxter used to call a fireplace 
when they were living here on a grub-stake. You'll find 
some wood. Get up a fire if you can, while I look after 
this poor girl. Sing out when you're ready, and I'll fetch 
her back." 

He spoke rapidly and urgently, and Cutter got him- 
self on his feet, and made his way with stumbling steps 
in the direction of the rear of the cavern. Philip watched 
him anxiously a moment ; he had asked him to go, to 
give him a reason for bestirring himself, but he feared 
he would drop asleep again while he went about the 
kindling of the fire. But there was no time for concern 
about Cutter. He stood upon his own stiff legs with a 
groan, and made his way over to where the girl sat 
propped against the wall of the cave. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 79 

Her head was drooped upon her breast, but she was 
not asleep, and she looked up with a lifeless smile as 
Philip bent over her. He made her take another long 
pull at his flask, and then snatched off the heavy mittens 
which Messiter had given up to her, and, peeling off the 
thin gloves underneath, fell to chafing her hands as brisk- 
ly as his own benumbed arms would let him. 

After a moment, when she began to look about her, 
he ran over to the prostrate figure of the clergyman, and 
shook him alive, and then punched up Messiter. When 
they had found their feet, they came over and helped 
him ; and the girl was able after a time to reward their 
common efforts with a look into which the heart and 
courage had a little returned. She began to seem again 
something like the girl who had cast off the restraining 
hand on her rein and galloped up the slope above Laugh- 
ing Valley City after her father ; and when they judged 
it safe, they bore her in among them to the fire which 
Cutter had cried out awaited them. The ears of one or 
two of them had been nipped ; but none of their limbs 
had been frozen, and, with the fire in sight, the men be- 
gan to dance about, flinging their arms wildly, and beat- 
ing their hands upon their legs in search of their lost cir- 
culation and suppleness of joint. 

She laughed at their crazy motions, where she sat cud- 
dled in all the wraps they could muster for her in front 
of Cutter's roaring fire, and they smiled back at her 
amusement. 

"Whew!" shouted her tall cavalier, taking off his 

heavy gloves and blowing on his fingers. " We forgot to 

shut the front door after us. Don't you people feel a 

draft?" 

6 



80 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

She gave him a mirthful nod. " That's the etiquette 
of cave-mouths," she said ; " you must always leave them 
on the latch. It's in case we should have visitors. Oh, 
think," she cried, in sudden terror, " if there should be 
any one else out in this storm ! " 

" Heaven help them," said Philip, " or show them the 
way to something like this." 

" Yes," said Cutter, drawing a musing sigh, as he set- 
tled himself by the fire. " I don't know how it was with 
you, Deed ; but there weren't many minutes of stand up 
and take it left in me when we found this." 

"Yes; it's very nice we're here," the girl said 
thoughtfully to Philip, who had come over to her corner, 
and was standing above her, asking if there was anything 
that could be done to make her more comfortable. " It 
was awful ! " She paused for a long moment in thought 
of it. " How did you happen to know this place ? Only 
think if you hadn't come up with us ! " 

Philip perceived that she did not know that he knew 
— that they knew. He pulled himself up, with an inward 
start. He saw that what he had been about to say would 
have presumed on their common acquaintance with the 
scene on the hillside above Laughing Valley. It was evi- 
dent that she had not seen them as she swept by their 
post of observation on her flight to join her father. 

" Oh, your friend would have remembered it. It was 
he who piloted us here — Mr. — " 

" Messiter. Mr. Eichard Messiter to the minister who 
baptized him ; to everybody else, just Dick." 

" I should never have found it without Mr. Messiter." 

" And we should never have found it without Mr. — " 
She hesitated, in her turn, as she looked up into his face. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 81 

" Deed," supplied Philip. 

" Deed ? " she repeated. " Oh," she added thought- 
fully, " I wonder if you know a Mr. Deed who — " Philip 
waited for her to finish. " Why, he once took me quite 
informally out of a burning building. Our school was 
on fire. It was in a village, — a Pennsylvania village, — 
and there were no engines. The boys from the other 
boarding-school across the way formed lines and passed 
buckets. It was at night. He happened to see me first 
at a window from his place in the line, and ran in and 
carried me down-stairs. The fire, just for that one fright- 
ful moment at the window, was worse even than the storm 
we've escaped, I think. Wasn't it fine of — of that other 
Mr. Deed, Mr. Deed?" 

" It was fine," said Philip, looking down into her 
glowing face. " I'm hoping I can prove kinship with 
him. What was his Christian name ? " 

" A rather odd name — Jasper." 

Philip started. "Did all that happen in a village 
called Aylesf ord ? " 

" Yes. How do you know ? " 

" Oh ! " laughed Philip, uncertainly. He bit his lip. 

" Is it some one you know, then ? How very nice ! " 

"Yes," said Philip, "it is some one I know — my 
brother." 

Dorothy exclaimed her surprise. "Then you must 
have heard my story long ago. I thought I was telling 
you something new." 

" It was new," returned Philip, without animation. 

" Of course. I ought to know that he wouldn't say 
how he had done an heroic thing. It wouldn't be like 
him." 



g2 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" No," assented Philip, " it wouldn't be like him." It 
was true that Jasper was not a man to exploit himself. 
He recognized the trait in him on reflection, without cor- 
diality. It was part of his propriety. He would long 
ao-o have said to himself that to boast was crude. 

o 

" But how very odd that you should be his brother ! " 
cried Dorothy, returning to her original surprise. She 
drew the saddle-blanket with which Philip had covered 
her feet closer about her. 

Philip burlesqued his thanks, and, with a little " Oh ! " 
of appreciation, her face melted into a smile. " I didn't 
mean — " she began imploringly. She joined in his laugh. 
" Do you call that fair ? " she asked. 

"What?" inquired he. 

" Entrapping me like that." 

" Have I said anything ? " retorted Philip, unblush- 
ingly. 

" No ; but you've made me. Or perhaps I said it my- 
self, but the meaning is yours." 

" Must I mean what you say ? " 

She pretended to muse. "You mustn't say what I 
mean," she answered, looking up at him with a smile that 
enchanted him. The name Maurice suddenly detached 
itself, as he met her glance, from the haze of memory in 
which it had been floating since he had heard it. Since 
she had mentioned Jasper he had been casting back for 
the origin of this memory. He recognized it now with a 
start. It was from Jasper himself that he had heard it. 
A myriad memories went buzzing in his head. Was it 
possible ? He recalled a school-boy passion of Jasper's, of 
which he had known a very little, — as little as younger 
brothers, just learning to smoke, are thought fitted to hear 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 83 

of an elder brother's love affairs, — and had guessed a great 
deal ; as much as such brothers commonly guess from 
slender premises. He had never seen the girl ; it had ail 
happened while Jasper was away at school. But he re- 
membered the name now. It was Maurice. 

A pang without meaning or reason passed through 
him as he glanced at her again. She and Jasper had 
once been lovers, then. She had permitted him to know 
her in the intimacy — the sacred intimacy, the intimate 
strangeness of betrothal. The thought gave him some- 
thing like a physical shock. With his knowledge of his 
brother's falsity fresh in his mind, the idea filled him with 
an empty, retrospective anger for her. He felt as if she 
had been profaned, and he believed his pang to be wholly 
for her. 

In the silence that had fallen between them while he 
pursued these thoughts, he discovered himself to be study- 
ing the face which she turned, now, half towards him 
and half towards the firelight. There was certainly a 
nameless expression in it which made the thought of any 
homage to it lower than the finest peculiarly intolerable. 
Philip fancied that he liked the sweet seriousness of her 
face even better than its prettiness ; but he was not sure, 
a moment later, that he did not like its unconsciousness 
better than either. She had less than the usual American 
pallor, and in her cheeks two bright spots of colour, which 
had tied before the exposure through which she had 
passed, began to show themselves unassertively. 

Her gaze had a certain charming freedom, and in all 
her motions she was singularly unafraid ; but this con- 
sisted with a remote touch of reserve which never left her, 
and which was constantly causing one to rejoice the more 



84 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

in a confidence that was in every expression of itself a new 
gift to the observer, because, in its openest moments, it 
seemed always to withhold a part of itself. In the same 
way the sober look which slept upon the verge of her 
lightest glances enriched and gave a special value to the 
dancing light which would come into her eyes at any 
challenge of her attention. The eyes themselves had been 
meant to be grey, apparently ; but one of them had rather 
agreeably failed on the way to greyness, and in some lights 
had a fleeting tinge of brown. A little more pronounced, 
and it might have been a blemish ; as it was, it formed a 
part of her indescribable charm. Something in the model- 
ling of her cheeks left the full view of her face a trifle 
disappointing, perhaps ; but this was because her clear and 
almost perfect profile promised so much. 

As she sat in the half darkness, her face thrown into 
relief, by the fire, she was certainly extraordinarily pretty. 
Her shapely chin was well in the air, her little mouth — she 
was in all ways made upon a little pattern — was pursed in 
meditation, and her straight, sensitive nose was cut with 
particular clearness against the light. It was not her nose 
which disappointed in her full face; it was incontro- 
vertibly very good. Her hair, which had taken several 
tumbles under the late stress, showed that shade of brown 
which you felt like thanking her for combining with her 
eyes and complexion, and had, as well, that pretty crink- 
liness, and excellent habit of waving or curling at unex- 
pected moments, which one knows. 

The pained thought which had drawn Philip's musing 
glance to her was being replaced by an untroubled pleas- 
ure in her beauty as he was roused from his preoccupation 
by Cutter's voice inquiring of her from across the fire : 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 85 

" Oozy ? " Their common plight seemed to beget a species 
of respectful intimacy among them ; and they all spoke as 
if they had always known one another. 

"Very," assented she. Dorothy Maurice had been 
born in the South, of a Southern mother, and her voice 
had the melody and vibrant sweetness of the voice of 
Southern women, without the accent and pronunciation 
which it would be difficult to prove altogether desirable, 
but which is pretty, too, if you like. " We might almost 
-be happy here for a week if we could keep warm so long, 
and if we could find something to eat. Don't you think, 
Mr.—" 

" Cutter," he said ; and her eyes met Philip's with an- 
other smile. 

" Don't you think we might find a larder somewhere 
about, if we looked ? It isn't possible that the miners who 
left this wood for our fire would stop at that." 

Cutter glanced at Philip interrogatively, and at her 
hint they explored. Houses wander dissolutely from 
street to street in Colorado towns, in wheeled pursuit of 
the real-estate market, but provisions which have once 
found their way on the backs of burros to a prospector's 
home in the mountains are less vagrant. After a sum- 
mer's work a prospector would be in a poor way who 
had not something more valuable to load on his pack- 
animals than the jerked beef, coffee, and canned fruits 
and vegetables upon which the young men presently 
came. 

" Uncommonly white of them to leave so much 
canned hospitality on the shelf for us, wasn't it?" said 
Cutter, exhibiting their discoveries. 

"Dear me! All that!" she said. "I should think 



86 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

so ! They must be very nice fellows. Did you say you 
knew them, Mr. Deed ? " 

" Yes ; as one knows men who take you in for the 
night, and do the handsome thing for the wayworn trav- 
eller. I spent a night here when I first came over the 
Pass. They were working a claim a little way on down 
the trail as I passed them on horseback. It was rather 
late in the afternoon, and when I asked my way of them 
they told me I'd better let them bunk me for the night. 
I'm afraid they didn't leave these good things here with 
us in view, quite ; but if they had known we were coming 
along it would have been like them. They will be back 
in the spring, I suppose, to begin work again. I hope 
they won't miss what we shall have to borrow from them." 

" Oh, I dare say they won't mind," said the clergyman, 
who had been silent for some time, while he thawed him- 
self out by the fire. " Politeness is rather wasted on the 
rough people one meets in this region, I find." 

" I don't know that, sir," said Messiter ; and Philip, 
who was about to protest, conceived in time that the 
clergyman was not without reason for his feeling, and 
forbore. 

" Ah, well, I do, you know," returned Maurice, cour- 
teously. "An odd business that, Dick, wasn't it?" he 
said with an uneasy humour. " "Were you by chance in 
the place they call Laughing Valley City this morning ? " 
he asked suddenly of Philip. The intention to ascertain, 
if possible, how much these two strangers knew of the 
affair on the hillside was obvious ; but Philip responded 
as if he had not perceived it. 

"We came through Laughing Valley City in the 
morning from Pinon," he said. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 87 

" Ah," said Maurice. " Then we passed you very 
likely on the road without observing you." 

" I think very likely," answered Philip, disingenuously. 
" We stopped for a while once, a little out of the road." 
He saw the girl's rising flush and wished to spare her, 
even if the clergyman did not care to be spared. 

Philip saw Miss Maurice draw a sigh of relief as he 
made this reply; and she rose at once, and set about 
making coffee — or such coffee as was possible without 
milk. The sugar they had. 

" Any tobacco ? " asked Cutter, as Philip came over 
his way. 

Philip offered him a bag from which the best of the 
contents had been spilled in fighting the storm, and 
knelt beside him to strike a match. He seated himself 
near him, next the fire. " Mighty poor business, this," he 
said as the tobacco began to glow in their pipe-bowls, and 
the smoke made a homelike fragrance in the air. " I 
shall never get to Maverick in time for my father's little 
affair." 

Cutter smiled. " Why, you monstrous ingrate ! " 

" Oh, of course I'm thankful it's no worse ; but when 
a thing's no worse, who would be so stingy with his 
wishes as not to want it better ? Plain luck isn't enough 
for a man. He's got to have luck glace." 

Cutter roared until the echoes answered him, and they 
all looked his way. "Man, man!" he shouted, "you 
don't want luck any more glace than to-day's, I hope." 

"What amuses Mr. Cutter?" asked Dorothy, coming 
toward them unfolding a ragged red table-cloth which 
she had found, and which she was about to spread for 
them on a square of rock. 



88 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" One on me," said Philip. " He wants to know if it's 
cold enough for me. Mayn't I help you, Miss Maurice ? " 

She let him endeavour as much as he would in the 
helpless helping which young men are accustomed to 
offer young women in such things, and which is doubt- 
less so much better for being so little effective. 

As they spread the cloth between them on the rock, 
Dorothy used the opportunity of her position opposite 
him to observe him attentively for the first time. She 
thought him less handsome than Jasper, after a moment's 
inventory. She immediately added that he was better- 
looking than she had fancied in her casual glances. His 
broad-shouldered vigour had its own value, and she did it 
justice in recalling Jasper's effect of shapeliness. Phil- 
ip's robust build wanted symmetry, and his strong face, 
tanned by exposure to the weather, and undeniably a little 
freckled, had the look of force rather than beauty. It 
was not upon a pattern, and failed at important points ; 
but it was in no danger of confusion with other faces of 
equally simple and rugged cast. His grey-blue eyes, de- 
rived from his father, had the quiet look of power ; they 
fronted her squarely, when he caught her look, in an 
amused and kindly twinkle. Less gentle things looked 
out of their depths unaggressively. With his wide, full 
forehead, the large mould of his face, the sensitive nos- 
trils, and firm under jaw, he had the look, Dorothy 
thought to herself, of a man who can do and make do. 

She reflected that he seemed much less than Jasper to 
have himself on his conscience. One could hardly use 
his long stride to whom it had ever occurred to wonder 
how he might look in walking ; and he would certainly 
have made sure, after their fight with the storm, of his 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 89 

hair and the sailor knot straying out of sight under the 
collar of his flannel shirt, if he had felt the responsibility 
about his appearance which she remembered in the Mr. 
Deed she had known. The gods playing at bowls would 
be a sight valued out of proportion to the consideration 
in which the game is held, and Dorothy found a peculiar 
entertainment for her thoughts in the spectacle of all 
this lustiness and vigour spreading a table-cloth with her. 

She smiled when the idea occurred to her, and as they 
failed for the third time to lay the cloth true between 
them, she caught the ragged thing out of his hands, with 
a righteous hesitation about her enjoyment, and began 
asking him questions about Jasper, as she went on to lay 
the cloth and to set the table herself. Philip answered 
mechanically. The thought that this sweet girl had once 
been Jasper's affianced wife became more tormenting, 
more shameful, as he perceived her charm. He caught 
himself staring almost rudely at her in the frequent 
pauses of their talk, abandoning himself to speculation 
about the affair. How could she ever have cared for 
him? He had saved her life; had she not just said it? 
That would be a permanent fact for such a girl, a reason 
for a lifelong gratitude. But, besides, everybody liked 
Jasper until they knew him very well. Some of them 
liked him afterwards. It was one of his talents — making 
himself liked. She seemed still to like him herself ; all 
that she said implied it. Was it a lover's quarrel that had 
parted them, perhaps? Did she still love him? He 
smiled to himself at his concern. All human contingen- 
cies were absurdly remote. He knew very well that they 
might never leave the cave alive, 

They hung shawls and some tattered blankets, found 



90 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

in the bunks, at the crevice and angles of the rocks, for 
her, when they were seated at last around the flat bulk of 
rock which she had divined to have served as the miners' 
table; and they spent themselves in entreaty of her to 
discover or invent another draft which they might shield 
her from, until Philip suddenly bethought him of the 
horses, which they had been obliged to abandon at the 
cave-mouth. In the mortal exhaustion which had over- 
come them all when they found shelter, they had known 
nothing better to do for them. It occurred to Philip 
that perhaps they could be got into the cave. 

They thought it a joke when he proposed it. But 
when they saw him to be serious, Cutter and Messiter 
volunteered to venture out with him; and after what 
seemed a long time, they returned, covered with snow, 
having found all but one of the ponies, and got them into 
the outer cave. Their whinnies came to them from there 
piteously ; and Dorothy was for trying if they would eat 
jerked beef or dried peaches. She went out with Philip 
when their little picnic meal was done, and brushed the 
snow from their flanks with a clothes-brush she produced 
from the bag that was strapped on the saddle of her own 
pony. 

" What would be the horse for coffee ? " she asked ; 
and at Philip's " Water, I'm afraid," she drew a sigh. 
" And we haven't any more than what we found in that 
little cup of a spring. You see, Mr. Deed, we must get 
away from here as soon as we can, for the horses' sake, if 
not for our own. I'm afraid they wouldn't care for the 
week I was proposing, even if we should. Poor fellows ! " 
she murmured, as they set up their long-drawn moan 
again. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 91 

They all rose when she returned to the inner cavern, 
and made a soft seat for her with blankets on the flat 
rock next the fire. Dick Messiter and Cutter were clearing 
away the traces of the meal they had just eaten on it. 
They took turns in fanning from her face the smoke 
which would sometimes be driven back down the chimney 
into her face by the wind still whirling at its worst with- 
out, and they piled the wood lavishly on the fire for her 
comfort, until, with a practical instinct, she went over to 
the corner in which the wood was, and pronounced 
against the reckless use of their scanty store. 

When she was seated again on the dais of rock, which 
raised her a little above her court, who, ready to do her 
bidding, sat or lay about her, coiled into such ease as they 
could manage on the rocky floor, she looked a smallish 
sort of monarch; and humouring their attribution of 
despotic power to her, she queened it with a gentle gaiety 
among them, issuing her commands in the royal plural, 
and admonishing our good Earl of Deed, and our right 
worthy servant Sir Lenox Cutter, with benignant severity. 
When Dick was beckoned imperiously to her side, he 
knelt in humbleness, and, with a tap of her riding-crop 
on his shoulders, she said, with an air she knew, " Sir, I 
dub thee Knight," and cried, " Rise, Sir Knight Dick ! " 

Her unconsciousness of Messiter's devotion was a pretty 
thing to see. Her unconsciousness, as I have said, was 
one of her charms : it was pleasant to observe her modest 
diffidence of all that touched the thought of self -valua- 
tion, and to perceive the impossibility of her ever com- 
ing to feel the world's thought of her. But it was 
especially nice to see how she would not know the love 
that followed all her motions with pursuing eyes, and 



92 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

yet how she could give herself so unthinkingly to him 
in every word. 

Philip, because he would occasionally catch the famil- 
iar glances that often passed between them, judged them 
lovers, with a man's haste; but a more instructed eye 
would perhaps have seen how the divine unconstraint of 
her attitude towards him might very well be a secret pain 
to Messiter ; for sometimes a light would come into his 
eyes by which one might almost guess how he might be 
hating her for liking him so well. 



V. 

Margaret had not seen Deed since the morning he 
had flung himself from the house. She knew nothing of 
him save what she had lately learned, that he had been 
called to Leadville the same afternoon to argue a case, 
and that he had gone. The information of the town 
regarding the sudden abandonment of the wedding was 
equally scanty. 

All that day, until far into the afternoon, Margaret sat 
in Beatrice's little parlour, waiting his return with patient 
certainty. Tears were easy while he was in trouble ; but 
she could not weep for herself. She sat watching the 
long stretch of road leading from the house down past the 
church in which the wedding was set to take place at half 
past four. A desolate, hunted look crept gradually into 
her stony gaze, as the cuckoo-clock in the hall told off 
the half hours, and he did not come. She rose quickly, 
biting her lip to repress the tears that began to flow readily 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 93 

enough, as Beatrice came in at four o'clock. Beatrice's 
face trembled with her own emotion ; her eyes were wet 
and red, as if she had been crying ever since Margaret 
had last seen her, when she had looked in at the slam- 
ming of the door behind Deed, to ask what had happened. 
Margaret caught Beatrice's caressing arm away. 

"Let me go," she said hoarsely. "You can't help 
me," she added, in a hard, uneven tone. " No one can 
help me." She choked back a sob. " Oh, can't you see 
that — " A surge of heart-sickness rose in her throat. 
She turned from Beatrice's pitying face, and ran up the 
stairs. 

There were very few wedding-garments to put away ; 
but one may drop as many or as scalding tears as one may 
wish on a very small spray of orange blossoms. 

It all seemed so strange, so impossible, so trivially out- 
side reason and experience. The orange rind on which 
one slips and breaks a limb, the elevator that happened to 
be here and not there, the train that was on the other 
track — how motiveless, how needless, what a littleness of 
fortuity ! She could not explain how it had happened. 
It was like a great grief which simply comes upon one, 
which befalls without our agency. She had spoken — she 
lied to him, if any one liked the word better — in the 
irresistible utterance of a feeling stronger than herself. 
That he should do what he proposed was unthinkable, 
intolerable : she could not let him blight his life like that. 
For good or ill she had to speak ; and now, though the 
event itself was much the most anguishing thing she had 
known, the only part of it she would have done otherwise, 
if it had been to do again, would have been to avoid the 
lie, somehow. 



94: BENEFITS FORGOT. 

She would not allow Beatrice to blame him when she 
let her into her bedchamber next morning. The shock 
had affected her physically, and she had yielded to Bea- 
trice's earlier insistence from outside the door at half past 
seven, and remained in bed. It might have been possible 
to listen to accusations of him if her own heart had gone 
out yearningly to him in forgiveness. But she was fright- 
ened by the hardness against him which she felt to be 
growing in her. Something almost like rancour began to 
prosper side by side with her love : it seemed to have war- 
rant in the tenderness which no event could really dimin- 
ish — perhaps it grew out of it. 

If he would, no one could venture to say what the 
desecration of a woman's inmost life must be through the 
intimacies, the familiarities, the endearments of a betrothal 
which comes to naught. The exchanged amenities, so 
infinitely right and sweet because marriage follows, be- 
come each a separate indignity and horror when it does 
not. To Margaret, who took all matters over-seriously ; 
whose training had erected barriers against these things, 
each of which had been broken down with a pleasant pain 
of its own ; who cherished, who almost loved her reserves, 
there was a new and subtler misery behind every pain 
which could have tormented other women in like trouble. 
To cast a glance, the most doubtful and fleeting, back 
upon this one romance of a life curiously lacking, hitherto, 
in all emollient experience of this sort, tore her with 
nameless pains. She felt as if she should like never to 
see a man again. 

She had given up, the day before, all thought of his 
return, she fancied. But when Beatrice entered with the 
morning mail she stretched forth her hand with the im- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 95 

pulsive certainty that there must be a letter from him. 
When Beatrice reluctantly shook her head, she perceived 
that she had secretly believed that he must still come back. 
It was because the thing was still too incredible. Did 
men, then, belong to a different race ? Was there one 
loyalty for them, and another for women? Was there 
another tenderness, another forbearance, another love? 
She had never had a brother ; Deed was the only man she 
had ever imagined qualities for ; she did not know about 
men — were they like this ? Could it be that they knew 
how to justify such things to themselves — that there 
might be cruelties indigenous to the conscience of men, 
which women must not blame because men could not 
know them to be such ? Perhaps to know all the wrong 
there may be in a wrong, one must have the gift to guess 
all the poignancy of its consequences ; and she saw that 
no man could really understand her humiliation. 

It was the lot of a woman to be chosen, distinguished, 
called apart ; made to believe that for one man she was 
different from all the rest. It was only the extremity of 
that distinction that could measure the shame of the 
credulity cast back in her face, the innocent faith become 
a thing to bite the lip and to flush with pain at thought 
of. She did not lessen her own offence. Coming hard 
upon Jasper's perfidy, she saw how it must have mad- 
dened him. She loved him, and, imagining his suffer- 
ing, pitied him from her heart. But all her smarting 
pride, the selfhood wounded to death, cried out against 
the cruelty of this desertion on their wedding-day. Cow- 
ering under the indignity which seemed to have stripped 
her of self-respect, she could not be sure of the validity 
of any judgment of the miserable woman she had be- 
7 



96 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

come. His act had beaten her down. She was sickly, 
unsure of herself, of life, of what she must think ; but she 
knew the dumb resentment that grew slowly in her for the 
helpless bitterness against him that it was. She loved 
him, she supposed that she must always love him ; but 
the injuriousness of the thing he had done stifled in 
these first hours every gentle thought. When the mem- 
ory of it was hottest in her, she would set her teeth in 
still wrath. 

There was another thing. It would seem as if the' 
most straightforward of women must have, somewhere in 
their depths, a kind of sense for indirection, which they 
can never quite forgive men for not understanding in 
them. Margaret had wished him to believe her ; she felt 
that his whole future and hers had hung upon his credit- 
ing her lie. But this was, unexplainably, a very differ- 
ent thing from liking it in him that he should have be- 
lieved her. Deed had not closed the door behind him 
before she had said to herself indignantly that he should 
have known her better. 

There were moments when it all seemed different, 
when she compassionated his situation, condemned her- 
self as the cause of it, and accused herself passionately 
for accusing him. He would be suffering as well ; not in 
her way at all, but worse, perhaps, because it was impos- 
sible to know how bad suffering might be which was 
outside one's comprehension. He must be thinking 
what she had said the final faithlessness. At these 
times she would say to herself that she could not wish 
him to think it less. If it had been what it seemed, it 
was as bad as possible, and she would have liked to have 
him hate her. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 97 

But when echoes of the scandal stirred np in the town 
by his abandonment of her began to come to her ears, the 
springs of tenderness dried in her. The two daily papers 
published at Maverick — having the fear of Deed before 
them — had reported the barren facts with what they 
meant for a picturesque reserve, and speculated about the 
affair with what seemed to them a self-denying decency. 
Beatrice kept the papers from Margaret, of course; but 
her boy turned innocent busybody, and brought a copy of 
one of them to her in furtherance of an enterprise of make- 
believe which Margaret had joined him in. Her eye 
caught the audacious head-line, and before she knew it 
she had read a dozen lines. 

She buried her face in her hands in shame; alone 
with the child she blushed as hotly as if all the world 
looked on. In fact, it did see her : that was her feeling. 

She shed no tears then ; but when Beatrice came in 
at twilight to light the lamp, she saw that she had been 
crying. It was not precisely for the comments of the 
newspaper. She had been thinking of the lines of a poem : 

Be good to me ! Though all the world united 

Should bend its powers to gird my youth with pain, 
Still might I fly to thee, dear, and be righted — 

But if thou wrong'st me, where shall I complain ? 
I am the dove a random shot surprises, 

That from her flight she droppeth quivering, 
And in the deadly arrow recognizes 

A blood-wet feather — once in her own wing. 

After Beatrice, Margaret found it easiest in these first 
days to see Dr. Ernfield, whom Mrs. Vertner had called in 
immediately. Margaret had liked Dr. Ernfield long before ; 
and she liked him still better in observing gratefully the 



98 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

devices of kindness by which he referred her prostration 
solely to physical causes, and the delicacy with which he 
implied that she had had no history previous to the mo- 
ment of any of his calls. They had been on almost in- 
timate terms before her wedding-day ; and she was grate- 
ful for his attitude in proportion as she perceived the 
difficulty to which he must be put to maintain it. 

He had been interesting to her, during the month she 
had passed in Maverick before her wedding-day, not 
merely as a man, — though he was an unusually interest- 
ing man, — but because of his situation. He had left a 
prosperous practice in Boston to come West in search of 
health. He was still under thirty-five, and had won his 
success while very young by making a specialty of diseases 
of the nervous system ; but he had paid for it, so to say, 
with himself, and he was in consumption. Beatrice, who 
had known him in Boston, was very fond of him, and in 
the first month of Margaret's stay he had been often at 
the house. It was the only house where he felt at home ; 
he was practising his profession in Maverick to avoid the 
stagnation of idleness, but he really knew no other family, 
and he had found that to have known people even slightly 
in the East is a tie when one comes to meet them unex- 
pectedly under the shadow of the Continental Divide. 
Beatrice, on her part, was accustomed to say that he was 
very nice. She perhaps meant by this that he had the 
gift of helpfulness, of sympathy, which, perhaps, is not 
especially common among men. Margaret had thought 
she saw how this faculty, comfortable as it may be to a 
physician's patients, — not to go into the question of his 
friends, — might be ruinous to a sensitively made physician ; 
she had perceived that the excess of his sympathy with 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 99 

the work he had done before he came to Maverick had 
been merely by way of devouring him. 

It was pitiful to remark how his disease had him in 
its clutch. The sinewy lines of his big body, designed 
plainly for the use of a strong man, had begun to waste 
before the attacks of his malady. It was observable, 
however, that he was still strong of limb ; and the look 
of his face — kept alive by his ardent and commanding 
glance, and hidden, for the most part, by a thick brown 
beard — was scarcely the look of a sick man. 

It had been a pleasure to Margaret to see this sturdy 
fellow — who had the effect, in spite of his weakness, of 
confident strength — ramp up and down Beatrice's little 
parlour, with his hands in his pockets, expounding his 
theories of health and disease — theories which fascinated 
Margaret by sinking instinctively for the moral spring 
underlying all large theories of health ; or anathematizing 
the whole system of living which gives us the damsel 
known to discussion as the "American Girl," a creature 
whose tenseness might not be half bad, Ernfield owned, 
for the spectator, but was death to the girl. And then it 
had been still pleasanter to hear him counter this with 
the story of nervously wrecked young lives, which Mar- 
garet saw, around the corners of his modesty, he had won 
back to the normal way of life. He never spoke of having 
cured anybody; he would sometimes own that he had 
taught a person here and there how to live. It had 
seemed to Margaret that he had accomplished this by 
transfusing a portion of his own life into each of these 
persons : for it was obvious that such patients as these 
must always have drawn their new life, in great degree, 
from his life ; that — a cure being in such cases so much 



100 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

an affair of sympathetic understanding, of a brisk, urgent, 
imperious individuality — they had lived at his expense. 

The thought of this strong, fine fellow, who had given 
his young manhood to the business of reinstating others 
in life, doomed to a death against the halting wretched- 
ness of which no hindrance could be opposed, unless it 
existed in the air of Lone Creek County, had been too 
painful to Margaret for endurance. 

Margaret's frank liking for him, and the gentleness of 
her manner towards him, springing from the compassion 
for his situation to which she could not give other expres- 
sion, were perhaps part of her charm for him ; but that 
which had really drawn him to her was the constant 
charm residing in her sincerity, her simplicity, and di- 
rectness, in her goodness, in her irresistible need to meet 
all questions in their highest phase, — above all, in her 
gentle womanliness. In the three weeks that had passed 
after her arrival, before Deed and she were ready to lay 
themselves open to the town's comment by announcing 
their approaching wedding, Ernfield had had time — in 
ignorance of her betrothal, and wholly without Margaret's 
suspicion of what was happening — to fall deeply, misera- 
bly in love with her. 

It was not precisely his fault ; but his position, when 
he ascertained it, gave him the sense of moral turpitude 
he would have felt if he had allowed himself to fall in 
love with a married woman. 

It was just as well, he said to himself; he had de- 
served it. A man who, in his condition, indulged the 
thought of connecting his future with another's for 
longer than one of those radiant moments of monstrous 
and baseless hope that must visit even the hopeless, was 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 101 

properly condemned to such an awakening. This reflec- 
tion should have made it easy to think of Margaret's wed- 
ding with equanimity ; and certainly should have silenced 
the thrill with which he heard of Deed's desertion of her 
on their wedding-day. Its effect, however, was to fill him, 
before the day, with a gloomy reluctance in her presence 
and a fear of meeting her honest eyes ; and after it, to 
shame and daunt him with a clear vision of the meanness 
of the hope that began to live tremblingly in him. 

He writhed under her approval of what he saw she 
took for his tact and delicacy, when he was forced, after 
the event, to visit her in his professional capacity. He 
felt like a scoundrel when he heard from Beatrice that 
for the present she could bring herself to see no one but 
him and her, that she could not bear that any eyes less 
friendly and familiar should look upon her grief in these 
first days. Her trust humiliated and abased him. He 
wanted to tell her what a scamp he was. He could have 
blushed at sight of the humble light of thankfulness she 
turned on him from her weary eyes, as he constructed a 
theory about her indisposition which referred it to purely 
physical causes. To see how her pride smarted under this 
blow in every fibre, to see how she was ashamed of being 
ashamed, and yet not abashed to let him perceive it, be- 
came intolerable. On the second day, in the mere neces- 
sity of putting an end to it, he ordered fresh air for her : 
he told her that she must go about. 

Beatrice went about the house on her daily duties 
with a grieving face. Margaret's position pained her to 
the heart. She could understand how she might have 
partly brought it on herself, with the noblest motives ; 
but nothing could even shadowily justify what Deed had 



102 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

done. She called his act by the hardest names to herself, 
when Margaret would not hear her denunciations. It 
was small comfort to talk to her husband. 

" What are you worrying about ? " he would say. 
" You ought to be throwing up your cap on any reasona- 
ble theory of friendship. It's an escape for both of them. 
You don't think they would have been happy, do you ? " 

" I don't know," returned his wife, frankly. " Don't 
you?" 

" I think," said Vertner, ambiguously, " if they had 
not been, — especially Deed, — it would not have been for 
lack of hard trying — especially Miss Derwenter's." 

" You think she might have tried too hard," suggested 
Beatrice, quickly. " Yes," she owned, after a moment's 
meditation ; " Margaret has that way. Perhaps she 
rather — insists." 

" She doesnH know quite when to let up," said Vertner, 
in the tone of admission. His wife had to smile. " It's 
a virtue — knowing when to spare." 

" And you think Margaret hasn't it ? " asked Beatrice, 
as anxiously as if she did not feel that she entirely under- 
stood Margaret's sweetly intentioned severity, and as if 
she had not reasoned with herself, and with Margaret, 
about it. 

" Well," owned Vertner, " I think she might consider 
it not quite moral." 

" No," said Beatrice, vaguely, as she helped him on 
with his coat (she had followed him out into the hallway 
to see him off for the day) ; " perhaps not." 

"And Deed wouldn't really enjoy that after a bit," 
said Vertner, as he adjusted the fur collar of his coat. 
" He can take things hard himself, and he does, but not 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 103 

in her way, and he doesn't take everything hard. There's 
a sort of sense of perspective about Deed : that's his 
humour. He has his varioloid moments." 

" Yes," rejoined Beatrice in sad musing ; " and Mar- 
garet hasn't. I know that. All her moments are acute. 
She goes conscientiously through the whole disease, 
whether it's a question of a pin or an elephant." 

" Well, perhaps you can see, then, if you've got to that 
point, how Miss Derwenter would be the very best wife in 
the world for a man who takes things in bulk — in Deed's 
whole-souled, passionate, hearty way. There's nothing 
equal to a gingerly, conscious, penny-wise way of looking 
at things for a wife for such a man." 

" Ned, you sha'n't say such things of Margaret ! " 

" Oh, Margaret's all right," said Vertner, in a tone of 
conviction, as he put his hand on the knob. He really 
liked her when she would let him. " It isn't her fault 
that Deed isn't built to appreciate her. She could make 
plenty of men ecstatically happy." 

"What kind of men?" 

" Well, my kind," returned her husband, audaciously. 
"I should always be ecstatically happy, any way, you 
know; and all that she could do for me would be so 
much clear gain." 

After these talks with her husband, nothing but a 
long conversation with Margaret could put Beatrice right 
again. She enjoyed the play of her husband's mind, of 
course ; but there were occasions for seriousness, and this 
was one of them. She found Margaret serious enough ; 
yet even she would smile dismally sometimes at the 
thought of certain contrasts. The concern which she 
had given herself during the month preceding her wed- 



104 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ing-day (the month in which she had made acquaintance 
with Maverick) as to whether she should be able to like 
the West, struck her, for example, in her present forlorn 
case, as food for sad amusement. She had not been afraid 
she should not get along, as the phrase is : she was ac- 
customed to managing so much as that for herself in all 
sorts of queer places. But it had occurred to her that, 
even with Deed, the West, as a permanent place of resi- 
dence, would leave a great many needs in her unsatisfied. 
She had not dared use adjectives about Maverick ; she 
might have to live in it, and she had the forethought 
to avoid attaching labels to the place by which even 
her own thought of it might finally discover itself to be 
bound. But it was at least undeniable that Maverick 
lacked a public library. She had thought that she would 
induce Deed to return to the East when he had won back 
the fortune he had lost the year before he had offered 
himself to her. Her ideal was a suburb just out of Bos- 
ton. 

Nothing had taught her so incontrovertibly the force 
of her love for him as the willingness she had found in 
herself to face for him the contrary prospect: for her 
heart had sometimes sunk grievously during her first fort- 
night at Maverick ; and once, when she thought she per- 
ceived from something he said that he was really fond of 
the West, that it suited something in him, — his sense of 
humour, perhaps ; she did not know, — her heart had gone 
coweringly down into her boots. It was at the thought of 
this terror that she now indulged a smile. One troubled 
one's self about such things when one was happy ; it had 
become pitifully indifferent to her whether Deed lived in 
Colorado or Patagonia. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 105 

One of the pangs which reached Margaret from the 
outside during the first days of her misery was that which 
she felt when she learned that Philip had at last arrived 
in Maverick. She had heard, in a kind of dream, that 
there were fears for his safety ; and finally, that he was 
given up for lost ; and it had seemed at the time only one 
of the thousand sides there appear to be to even physical 
pains. Now that she had come out of the stupor of suf- 
fering which had followed Deed's going, and began to be 
sensible to exterior measures of her trouble, she was sur- 
prised to find a fleeting wretchedness in the knowledge 
that Philip lived, and that his father, who must have been 
down into the bitterest depths of grief for his imagined 
loss, rejoiced without her. Por a moment she thought of 
Deed with untroubled tenderness. The other feeling fol- 
lowed, but the loving impulse taught her freshly the 
unbearable reach of her loss. It went too far. It cut too 
deep. 

Vertner met the snow-bound party at the station. He 
usually went to the trains when he was in town. Men he 
knew were often passing through on their way to Denver 
or to the mountain towns. They gave him the last word 
about the outlook at the newest mining camp ; they kept 
him wise about the ups and downs of older places. When 
they would stay overnight at Maverick, he would often 
spend the evening at the hotel, losing a little to them at 
poker, and getting on the inside, as he said, of good things 
in mines and real estate. He brought Margaret word of 
the arrival of Philip. 

" Mighty close shave those fellows had," he said. " It 
couldn't be done once in a dozen times. I wouldn't back 
Charlie Cozzens to do it, and he knows every foot of the 



106 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

pass as if it were his Addition." The retired stage- 
driver's investment in Maverick real estate was known as 
" Oozzens's Addition." " But they are badly done up after 
it. The young lady went to bed." 

" Young lady, Ned ! " exclaimed Beatrice. 

" Certainly. Young lady. Young lady and father, 
in fact. Maiden slender, fair, good-looking — very. Fa- 
ther a clergyman, large, clever, manners until you can't 
rest — not here purely as a sanitary measure. The young 
lady really bore it pretty well. You can see that she was 
prettier three days ago, but she will pick up her prettiness 
again at the Centropolis House." 

" A clergyman, Ned ! " 

" Well, not too much of a clergyman — not the kind 
that would worry the clerical Inspector of Weights and 
Measures with overweight. A good, practical, every-day, 
earthly Christian, with a soul away above the unrighteous 
nickel — shaped to nobler ends, like thousand-dollar bills ; 
could make arrangements with soul to overlook some 
things. Good fellow ; I took a kind of shine to him." 

It was one of Ned Vertner's own sayings that he was 
a composite. He would not have been anything but the 
" rustler " he was — dependent on the friendliness of for- 
tune to this month's scheme for his next month's house 
rent — on any account; but he liked to remember how 
easily and naturally he might once have been the conven- 
tional gentleman whom he hated. 

The Vertners had memories of the revolutionary hero 
with an honest grandfather, and the three succeeding gen- 
erations of Unitarian ministers which make a good family 
in Berkshire. There were no better than they in their 
village ; and though Ned Vertner, before he was sixteen, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 107 

disliked the people his family knew in Boston, as he dis- 
liked the propriety of the white picket-fence in front of 
their white frame house with green blinds, it was a gratifi- 
cation to him at times to recall that the good social form of 
his family had existed for him to refuse. He would not go 
to Harvard ; when he was twenty-three he went to Chile, 
and remained there five years, helping a little to build the 
railway which his party went out to build, and learning 
to live hard, to drink hard, and to gamble more than he 
could afford. 

It was in his fifth year — when he was coming down 
with a fever which went near to finishing him — that 
Philip Deed joined the party. Philip would have said 
to any one who had challenged his liking for Ned Yert- 
ner, that he liked him because he had contributed what 
effect there might be in three months' nursing to saving his 
life. At all events, when Vertner was well enough to sail 
for home, they parted in the relation of good comradeship 
often existing in new countries between men who are of 
no spiritual kindred. 

It was Deed who, at Philip's suggestion, put Yertner 
in the way of coming West when he had found Berkshire 
more impossible than he had left it; and it was Deed 
whose professional relations to various adventurous enter- 
prises opened the way to Yertner's first " scheme," and 
showed him his natural calling. 

The impartial spectator would scarcely have supposed 
it a calling justifying marriage ; but in Colorado rustling 
has the recognition of one of the liberal professions, and 
when Yertner had been engaged in it a year he worked a 
pass as far as Chicago through a friend, and returned 
from Boston, ten days later, married. It was an incredi- 



108 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ble marriage ; it was the one thing, Philip told him, when 
he met Beatrice, that he should never forgive him for. 
Vertner admitted that he was ashamed of himself; no 
one was more conscious than he that he was an unde- 
servedly lucky dog. 

" But what could I do ? " he would say. " I told her 
it was a shame and a fraud ; I gave her a full resume of 
my worthlessness ; I told her that if I had ever been good 
for anything I'd got over it ; I told her that my doings out 
here would turn a Public Gardens swan red- with pure 
shock, and would keep her conscience working on horse- 
car drivers' hours every day. She said she liked it. 
Then I went for the country, and gave this section down 
the banks. I told her that she would have to breakfast 
on climate and dine on scenery ; that in this altitude it 
takes ten minutes to boil an egg soft, and that they put on 
beets the day before ; that chickens can't live, and cow's 
milk is twelve cents a quart ; that pneumonia rides around 
on a mowing-machine ; that she wouldn't find a library 
in Maverick ; that the church was closed, and the lecture 
bureau in the dry dock ; and that you could take up all 
the civilization in the place on a fork. She said that none 
of these things mattered, and that something else did. I 
gave her up." 

"Hush, Ned!" she was saying now, in response to 
his profession of liking for Maurice; "perhaps we can 
get him to stay with us here for next Sunday. It is 
months since we had a service. An Episcopal clergyman, 
did you say ? " 

Vertner nodded, as he cut a little more steak for him- 
self (they were at their one o'clock-dinner). "I didn't 
say ; but that's his rating. Don't count me in, though, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 109 

Trix, on any scheme for supplying the pulpit of St. 
John's in the Wilderness. You remember I took a hand 
in the last gospel boom in Maverick. Invite him here, if 
you like, and get him to preach for you next Sunday. 
I've no objection, and he won't kick if you make it worth 
his while. But leave me out. I wouldn't undertake the 
contract of furnishing a clergyman to that congregation 
again for a commission of fifty per cent, on his salary." 

Vertner laughed with enjoyment. Margaret, who had 
found no way of taking Vertner in the month she had 
spent in the house with him, was silent. She was think- 
ing of Philip, and wondering how to frame a question 
which would inform her about him without seeming to 
seek the information. 

Beatrice saved her the need. " We might go and call 
on Miss Maurice at the hotel," she said, doubtfully, look- 
ing toward Margaret. " That would commit us to noth- 
ing. We could see Mr. Maurice and judge for ourselves. 
Do you think she would see us, Ned?" 

" Why, she was going to bed when I saw her, to stay 
until she was rested. But she would see St. John's in the 
Wilderness on her father's account, I should think, if you 
made it plain who you were. Write under your name on 
your card : ' Mrs. Vertner, representing St. John's in the 
Wilderness.' You'll get the consideration of a commer- 
cial man travelling for a big house." 

Beatrice did not smile, but looked at Margaret ques- 
tioningly. " I think she might be willing to see us," 
Margaret answered to Beatrice'sjnquiring look. "After 
such an experience, she might be glad of the sight of 
friendly faces, even if they were strange." 

They found this to be true when they went next day. 



HO BENEFITS FORGOT. 

They both made friends at once with Dorothy, who was 
sitting up, and who told the story of what had befallen 
them in the mountains, gaining for the first time, in see- 
ing its effect upon her hearers, a sense of the danger 
through which she had passed. She did not need a re- 
minder to make her shudder at the journey through the 
storm ; but the time in the cave had not seemed unhappy. 
She had not felt that they were in danger — perhaps she 
had not been allowed to feel it. It occurred to her now 
to wonder what might have happened if the storm had 
not ceased the morning after they had taken refuge there, 
if the wind had not fallen, if the snow had not begun to 
melt, and if a party of miners, on their way from Bayles's 
Park, had not found them on the second day, weak and 
exhausted, of course, but able to ride to Bayles's Park, 
where they took the train. 

It was the hope of seeing Philip that had helped Mar- 
garet to come out for the first time since the day that was 
to have been her wedding-day. The event had left her 
spiritually sore ; she could not bear to see any one, much 
less listen to the questions which must be asked if she 
went out. Yet there was nothing she liked so little as 
what she called, in her plain speech, " dodging " : it 
seemed cowardly not to take the world as it came ; and 
she was glad of a strong reason for going out. She 
wanted to see Philip, whom she did not know : it would 
be the next thing to seeing his father. But it seemed 
that Philip had left Maverick within a few hours of his 
arrival. Philip, in fact, had taken the evening train the 
night before for Leadville, leaving Cutter to go on to 
Denver, where he had friends who might find something 
for him to do in connection with the smelting- works 



BENEFITS FORGOT. HI 

there. Margaret knew that he must have gone to see his 
father at Leadville, and she flushed as she thought of one 
of the probable subjects of conversation between them. 



VI. 

As Philip asked for his father at the hotel which Deed 
was accustomed to make his home during his frequent 
visits to Leadville, it was in his heart to wish that he had 
not always been the unsatisfactory son. The day before 
he might have wished it in a spasm of contrition for the 
necessity of asking his father for more money; but he 
was wishing it now because the things they were saying 
about Deed at Maverick pained and angered him. He 
was sure his father was in trouble, and he had come up to 
Leadville with an impulsive desire to help him if he 
might. He had telegraphed him from Bayles's Park of 
their safety, and from Maverick, as soon as the rumours 
reached him, that he was coming up to Leadville. 

He wanted to help his father in the trouble he merely 
guessed — he had not stayed to hear the story : but to 
speak to him as he would like to speak, their relation 
should be more equal ; it ought to depend less for its 
harmony on his father's forbearance. He wished heart- 
ily that he had always persevered in some particular oc- 
cupation ; or, lacking that, that his failures had cost his 
father less. In these moods he always denounced his 
failures to himself as the result of crude and silly experi- 
ments which he should have known enough to avoid : but 

when he was as sensible as this he was usually a little 
8 



112 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

more sensible, and perceived that the whole fruitless 
drama of his life, thus far, was inevitable : a fellow like 
him, he supposed, had to make an appointed degree of 
fool of himself. 

In this light the restless longing of his boyhood to 
possess himself, to lay hands on the charter of his life on 
his own account ; his refusal to please his father by going 
to Columbia; the unquiet wish for a different, a freer life, 
another set of conditions — a man's, say ; his aimless and 
resultless year in Chile as a civil engineer; his six 
months of orange-growing in Florida ; his other six 
months in which he saw a fortune in evaporating peaches 
in the Southern States, — it was the fortune which had 
evaporated, — and this last empty-headed folly at Pinon 
— all seemed foolish indeed, but necessary, like the stages 
of a disease. He always said to himself in these con- 
temptuous reflections on his doings that he knew better 
now, had learned a lesson. And this was in so far true 
that he seldom made the same kind of fool of himself 
twice. 

He was thinking how glad he should be to see his 
father again, as he followed the bell-boy out of the 
crowded hotel office along the creaking hallways and up 
the swaying stairs (the hotel had been built of unseasoned 
timber, when sawmills were fifty miles away, and money 
was worth four per cent, a month, and the structure had 
begun to fall apart), and was adding to himself that 
since it was in his blood to do undesirable things, it was 
trebly undesirable that they should be destined to be 
the disappointment and trouble of so good a fellow as his 
father. He treated him so handsomely, always, that his 
disappointment was seldom in evidence ; but Philip knew 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 113 

that it existed, and knew — he recalled the fact now with 
a bitter smile — that it had been left for Jasper to realize 
his father's ideals. 

Jasper had been a cautious and conservative investor 
at ten, a patient, thoroughgoing man of business at sev- 
enteen. He sold foreign stamps at school while he was in 
the first reader, and drove hard bargains in marbles and 
decalcomania pictures before he knew his Latin paradigms. 
He was eight when it occurred to him that he might as 
well turn a penny by serving the morning paper to his 
father, and to the gentlemen whom he knew on the block 
(it was in JSTew York), as to let the regular carrier earn it. 
He rose at five o'clock in the morning to look after his 
papers, and he had been getting up early ever since. 

Philip never got up early unless to go hunting, or 
bird-nesting, or fishing, or to catch the train at the end of 
the term when he came from boarding-school. He was 
glad to be going home then, and didn't mind: it was 
always a happiness to see his father again. He was not 
merely his father, but a kind of hero to him. Jasper 
often got home rather late ; there were trades to be set- 
tled with the boys at school. As the elder brother (he 
used his advantage of a year for all it was worth) he was 
properly reserved in his feeling about the coming. And 
when the time came, Jasper went into business, liked it, 
stuck to it, succeeded in it ; and then took charge of the 
ranch, and made a success of that. 

Jasper had known what he wanted to do from the be- 
ginning, and was entirely capable of doing it. Philip had 
known clearly only what he did not want to do, and thus 
far had not done much. It was this that made him hesi- 
tate as he came to the door of his father's room. Pie 



114 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

wished again that he could feel that he stood near his 
father, that the invariable kindness which he remembered 
in him from boyhood had nothing to forgive in him, that 
he had not disappointed him. 

But he turned the knob and went in. His father was 
sitting under the ineffective light of a huge bronze chan- 
delier wound about with a brambly wreath of gilt. He 
was absorbed in work upon a heap of legal documents 
scattered over the table, and did not hear Philip's en- 
trance. When the son touched him on the shoulder he 
turned hastily, and for a moment did not perceive who it 
was. When he saw, he rose hastily, stretching both hands 
out to him. " Why, Phil ! Phil ! " he cried, and stopped, 
choking and not knowing how to go on. " I — the fact is 
— I thought we shouldn't be seeing you — shouldn't — 
Phil," he broke off, dashing his hands to his eyes, " what 
luck — what blessed luck ! I had given you up. I — find 
a seat, will you ? " 

Deed sat down hastily, and buried himself in his 
papers. His lip shook. 

Philip found a seat on the bed. He himself was much 
agitated. He had not counted on this at all. He had 
allowed for his father's anxiety, and had telegraphed him 
as soon as they reached Bayles's Park ; but that he would 
think him lost in the storm was outside all his thoughts. 
Yet no one knew better how near they had all actually 
been to death in the snow. " Dear father ! " he said to 
himself, as he watched him making his poor feint of go- 
ing on with his work. " It's awfully good of him to 
care ! " 

Deed glanced up at him once, venturing a smile, and 
looked down again forthwith. When he was done with 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 115 

the last practicable pretence, he folded his papers slowly. 
Philip had never seen him so careful about adjusting 
them. 

He rose at last, clapping the bundled documents on 
the table briskly, and came over to where Philip was sit- 
ting on the bed. Deed dropped down beside him, laying 
his arm lightly about his shoulders. 

" Well, boy, how goes it? " 

Philip dropped his eyes. "Why, that was what I 
came up to ask you, father. How does it go ? " 

A spark lighted in Deed's eye. He drew in his breath 
sharply. He came back and stood before Philip after a 
nervous turn across the floor. 

" Phil ? " 

" Father ? " 

" You got my wire at Laughing Valley ? " 

Philip nodded. His father regarded him for a moment 
in pained question of his face. He thought he read his 
condemnation in it. 

" Say it, Phil ! Say it ! " he cried hoarsely. " Don't 
sit there dumb ! I know what you think. You're right. 
I sold you out. I signed away your rights. I did you 
out of your future with a foolish, amiable stroke of 
the pen. I trusted a scoundrel, and you've to pay for 
it. I wanted to do the handsome thing by Jasper, and I 
did it — at your expense. It's been your treat all along, 
Phil," he said with a miserable smile, " though you didn't 
know it." 

Philip leaped up. " Great heaven, father ! you haven't 
been thinking that I was shouting around about my mis- 
erable little share in that business? Surely you don't 
think that I could name it beside your trouble, much less 



116 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

be fooling with the poor question of blame ? I should 
think Jasper was enough to blame for half a dozen." 

His father smiled sadly. "What Jasper has done 
can't excuse me. He couldn't have done it if I hadn't 
thrown the way open to him. If I hadn't trusted 
him—" 

" And you expect me to accuse you of having trusted 
him ? Wouldn't a father trust his own son, I should like 
to know ? Is it a thing he must answer for ? " 

" My God, Phil ! hasn't he answered for it, isn't he 
answering for it, will he ever get to the end of answering 
for it ? " He covered his eyes. 

" I know, father," said Philip, taking a turn across 
the room. " Ingratitude is like that. It hurts — it keeps 
on hurting." 

" Yes," owned Deed grimly ; " it hurts." 

" Surely it's enough then. Pray don't bother about 
me. You would have done it for me in the same situa- 
tion. Do you think I don't know that, or that I don't 
know that I never gave you the chance ? I've not been 
doing the approved thing. I never have. When I do, it 
will be time enough for me to trot out grievance." 

" Phil, I've not been fair to you." It was the ex- 
pression of his sense of his whole course towards him from 
boyhood ; but Philip took it to refer to the contract. 

" Pshaw, father, I shall rub along for the few years 
left of the partnership. What difference can it make? 
I shall be all the better for having to make my own way 
for a while." 

" Few years ? " exclaimed his father. 

" The partnership — it's five years, isn't it ? " said 
Philip, dropping on the bed again, and curling his legs 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 117 

up comfortably. " You won't mind my smoking ? " he 
asked, producing a cigarette. 

His father did not speak, as he drew a match across 
his boot. " You haven't given Jasper anything. I could 
understand your feeling that unfair. He has nothing 
permanently that is mine. At worst, you've lost me 
nothing, father ; merely postponed it. It's only five 
years, and if it were ten or fifteen, it's not your act ; it's 
Jasper's. Don't talk of my loss ; there is none. And if 
there were, what would it be to yours ? I could only lose 
money by him. I'm — well, I'm not his father. I haven't 
protected him, and worked for him, and kept him from 
every sort of harm, and done all I knew for him since 
he was a child. I never gave him a father's love and 
trust to wound me with." 

Deed groaned. " Oh, stop it, Phil ! Stop it ! You 
make it impossible to tell you." He rose and wandered 
about the room aimlessly, picking up the rose-flushed 
vases on the mantel, and studying their red and gilt flow- 
ers, turning up the gas, and leaving it hissing, detaching 
the loop that caught back the window-curtain, and return- 
ing it to its bracket again. Philip watched him wonder- 
ingly. His cigarette went out. 

" Oh, come, father ! " he said at last, smiling. " One 
would think you had been putting up some infernal job 
on me." 

His father looked up, eying him haggardly. " You've 
said it." 

" Said what, father ? I don't understand." 

Deed paused with the poker in his hand to say over 
his shoulder, as he stooped to the fire, " They didn't tell 
you at Maverick, then ? " 



118 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" I gathered you were in trouble. I heard that your 
marriage was postponed. I thought you would rather 
tell me?" 

" Oh, so I would ! So I would ! " exclaimed his fa- 
ther, absently, as he turned from the fire. He looked 
remorsefully into the eyes that met his. "Why didn't 
somebody tell you ! " he cried. Philip made a place for 
him by his side, as he came meditatively towards him, 
with his head down. Deed guessed the grease-spot on 
the carpet, clouding one of the fruit-bearing boys in their 
ovals, to be kerosene, as he paused a moment in study 
of it. 

He had decided it was champagne, as he looked up 
and faced his son again. 

His voice melted. " How the deuce am I going to tell 
you, Phil?" 

" What's the use, father ? " 

" Oh, use ! " exclaimed Deed, impatiently. He tapped 
his foot above the curly head of one of the dove-coloured 
boys. " You've got to know. Pshaw ! Why didn't some 
one tell you ! " He strode away to the other corner of the 
room, snapping his fingers noiselessly. 

" Tell me, father—" began Philip. 

" You won't believe it ! She didn't." He breathed a 
heavy sigh. " I suppose it isn't very credible," he said, 
staring into the air. " I don't understand it myself all 
the time." 

" But—" 

" It's infamous, I tell you. You don't want me to tell 
it. Better go hear it from the gossips, Phil. I supposed 
they knew about it by this time ; I trusted to your having 
heard it from them. They will know what to think 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 119. 

about it. I don't. I think it magnificently right one 
minute, and the other thing the next. It's cost me 
enough to be right ; it's cost every one else enough to be 
wrong." 

" Tell me, father," insisted Philip, " what coil has 
Jasper got you into ? " 

" Ah, now you have it, Phil ! That's something like ! 
Stick to that ! That's what I say to myself when I've 
accused myself black and blue. I say it was Jasper. It 
was Jasper; and it was Adam, too, in the same way. 
Things have got to have a beginning. It would be a poor 
sin that hadn't some sort of provocation to its back." 

" You forget who you're talking to, father. You don't 
think you can make believe you have done anything 
wrong." 

" I don't know what I can make you believe. Sup- 
pose, Phil, you are fool enough to trust a man to wear a 
diamond. He isn't only wearing your diamond, you see, 
but your trust. One day he simplifies things by pocket- 
ing the stone. In a wrestle for it, you snatch it from 
him and throw it into the river. You are not strong 
enough to get it back for yourself and keep it ; only just 
strong enough to keep it from him by losing it yourself. 
You see how you couldn't let him have it, don't you, 
Phil?" 

" Yes, I see," said Philip, thoughtfully. 

" It's not the stone, you know." 

Philip stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "No; it 
isn't the stone." 

" You could bear that ; the other you can't. I've sold 
the range for $25,000," he said abruptly. 

Philip started. " But it was worth $150,000." 



120 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Yes," said his father, dryly ; " that's the point." 

." My dear father — you can't do this." 

" Why not ? " demanded Deed. 

" It's illegal, for one thing. You can't sell even a 
partner's property out from under him." 

" Certainly I can — this sort of property. I can sell 
the cattle as if they were dry-goods or drugs — things a 
partner is as free to sell to an innocent purchaser, with- 
out the knowledge and consent of the other partner, as if 
they were altogether his own. They're chattels. And as 
to the range, whose land is it in Colorado ? Not mine. 
Not the partnership's. You don't suppose I'm conveying 
a fee simple to four or five thousand acres of land, I hope. 
I haven't got it to give. The purchaser holds it as he 
can. Of course there is the question of damages with 
Jasper. But I'll risk that. Trust me for the law of it, 
boy." 

Philip stared at him. " And what does Jasper say ? " 
he asked, in a voice which he seemed to hear speaking in 
the tones of some one else from a distance. 

His father glanced up at him doubtfully. He caught 
his hands behind his big head as he crossed his legs and 
threw himself back in the deep sleepy-hollow chair. " Jas- 
per ? Why, that's just the pity of it. We haven't heard 
what Jasper thinks. It's too bad, because that's where all 
the fun comes in — what he thinks. The fun has been 
rather slow so far in other quarters." 

" Do you mean that you have ruined yourself to even 
things up with Jasper ? " demanded his son, making no 
answer. 

Deed glanced at his nails. " I shouldn't put it that 
way," he said huskily ; " but that's what it comes to." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 121 

" And Miss Derwenter — Mrs. Deed, my mother who is 
to be ! " 

His father looked steadily into his eyes a moment. " I 
meant to ruin her too, but she objected." 

" And that is what—" 

" What parted us ? Yes," said his father. 

Philip turned suddenly upon his heel and strode away 
to the window, brushing aside the lace curtains, and van- 
ishing within the embrasure. The street was alight with 
the night gaiety of Leadville. He bent an unseeing eye 
on the spectacle. 

As his father gazed after him, a look of desolation set- 
tled on his face. The lightness he had forced fell away 
from him, and he fixed a glance upon the spot where his 
son had disappeared — bitter, doubting, wistful. 

He saw suddenly how the self -accusations of his lone- 
liness — the miserable loneliness which had overtaken him 
since he had broken with Margaret — had instinctively 
looked to Philip for contradiction all along, how he had 
relied on Philip's comprehension. At his lowest he had 
said to himself that Philip, cruelly injured as he was by 
his act, must see how he had come to do it, must recog- 
nize its inevitableness. Jasper had always had his admira- 
tion, his approval — Philip was right about that. But he 
had always understood Philip better. He was more like 
himself. And now he trusted him to understand him, to 
make allowances for a thing which he had known well, 
even in his passion, must need some allowance from any- 
body, and would never be understood at all by more than 
one or two. One of these he had supposed confidently 
would be Margaret. To repeat his disappointment in her 
with Philip would be merely killing : he could not bear 



122 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

it. Why, he began to ask himself, had he done this 
thing? 

" Oh, come out of that, Philip ! " he cried at last, in 
an irresistible burst of impatience. " Come out, and say 
what you've got to say ! I can stand it, I guess." 

Philip obeyed slowly. He paused just outside the cur- 
tains, fastening his eyes on the floor. 

" There's nothing to say, father. You've done it, 
haven't you ? " 

" Do you wish I hadn't ? " asked his father, quickly. 

" Why, it's hardly my part, is it, father, to question 
what you do ? " 

" Pshaw ! " exclaimed his father, contemptuously. 
" I'm not asking for criticism. I ask about your feelings. 
You know about them, I suppose. You understand, I dare 
say, how it feels to lose $50,000." 

Poor Deed ! Why should the wrong which he was 
conscious of having done Philip and Margaret make him 
hard toward both of them, where he most wished to be 
gentle ? 

Philip winced, but controlled himself to say : " What 
has my feeling to do with it, father ? It's the thing itself 
that matters, isn't it ? " 

"You mean on high moral grounds?" asked Deed, 
the colour rising in his face threateningly. Philip knew 
the approaches of one of, his father's bursts of passion too 
well to feel guiltless in provoking one of them, however 
remotely. 

" Do you want me to say I like it, father ? I don't. 
But would my liking better it ? Surely you see, father, 
that the thing is wrong in itself." 

" Oh, I don't know what I see," cried Deed, gnawing 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 123 

at his bristly mustache as he paced the floor. " I know it 
seemed the only right thing there was when I did it. I 
know I had to do it. That's my safest ground, perhaps — 
I had to do it. Good God, Phil ! you see that ! You 
wouldn't have had me leave him with his plunder ? " He 
sat down, and instantly leaped up again. Philip wandered 
restlessly about. " I haven't it, it's true, but he hasn't. 
It's cost the whole subject of dispute to beat him ; but I 
have beaten him. I have rounded on his devilish falsity. 
And I would do it again. Yes ; rather than have to think 
that he had done such a thing and prospered in it, I would 
do it twice over. Why, Phil, I've beaten him ! Could I 
pay too much for that?" 

Philip bit his lip. " Why, since you ask me, father, 
I'm bound to say that I think you could. I think you 
have. His being a blackguard doesn't help it. It makes 
it worse." 

Deed's face darkened. "You mean that you have 
paid too much. You mean that I let you in for enough 
in making you pay for my whim of pleasing Jasper with- 
out making you pay for my squaring of accounts with 
him?" 

" No," said Philip, looking in his father's face ; " I 
don't mean that. They are my accounts, too. It's against 
me that Jasper has done as much as against you. Heaven 
knows," he said, as his face darkened, and he doubled his 
fist under his sleeve, " I'd be glad to square my account 
with Jasper. If there is going to be a settlement, I'm 
ready to pay my share. But, father, there mustn't be a 
squaring of accounts on this basis. The thing's wrong, 
it's indefensible, it's impossible." 

Deed drove his clenched hand into his open palm. 



124 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Impossible ? For whom ? For you ? For Margaret ? " 
he demanded. "Or perhaps you mean for Jasper ? " he 
asked mockingly. 

" I do mean for Jasper. It's a wrong to him." 

" A wrong to Jasper !" cried Deed, in scornful amuse- 
ment, kicking a chair out of his path as he walked back 
and forth. " T— s— s— s ! " 

" See here, father, I've no love for Jasper. You must 
know that. But I can't be part of a scheme for burking 
him like this." 

"Burking him?" 

" Well, selling him out, wiping out his share while he's 
away. You don't want me to help you do a wrong like 
that to yourself, father ? " 

" Did I ask for your help ? " inquired Deed, in a tone 
of defence. 

Philip flushed. " Why, I should have said that you 
had used it." 

" In wiping out your share ? " said his father, with 
threatening calmness. " Do you object to that ?" 

" I suppose I must say that I object to the purpose 
you are wiping it out for. Why, father, you see it your- 
self. You've as much as owned it. The thing's not 
fair ! " 

Deed's mouth fell. He stared at him in an amaze- 
ment that gave way to a look of inexpressible grief, as he 
came and stood before Philip, and laid a doubting hand 
on his shoulder. " Phil, Phil ! " he cried, miserably in- 
terrogating the eyes which his son let fall. " You're not 
going back on me ! " 

" Going back on you, father ? " Philip snatched the 
hand hanging by his side. " I'm trying to save you. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 125 

You're letting yourself in for a lifetime of remorse. 
You'll kick yourself for this thing before you are a week 
older. Think, father ! Can you aif ord to do a wrong 
like this to Jasper ? " 

His father gave an inarticulate grunt of contempt, 
and bit his lip as if he feared what he might be tempted 
to say. It had been in his mind to tell Philip that he 
had done his best to buy his word back about the range, 
in order to keep his word with Margaret, and that he 
had had his trouble for his pains. But he would not 
give him so much satisfaction now. It had not been 
done for Jasper's sake, at all events, he said to himself 
scornfully. 

" Drop it, Phil ! " he said suddenly, at last. " This 
isn't a safe subject between us. I know what I've done. 
I've never had a doubt—not one single moment's doubt, 
mind you — about this as far as Jasper is concerned. He's 
done me the crudest wrong that a son can do a father. 
Do you think it's a time to be nice about what I do to 
him?" 

" Why, father, isn't it the time of times ? If he had 
never wronged you, one might afford a luxury like that. 
One can do it with best friends. But to do an indefensi- 
ble thing — you own that, father : it is indefensible — and 
to choose Jasper for the object of it ! — you see, yourself, 
it won't work. When you put him in the right by put- 
ting yourself in the wrong with him, you're simply taking 
a permanent lease of torment. There's no end to the 
mess, this way. Don't you see it? Aggression of some 
sort becomes his right. It will be almost a virtue in him. 
Where will there ever be end to it ? It will make you un- 
happy, father. That is what I'm thinking of. And the 



126 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

unhappiest part of the whole business will be when you 
see that, after all, it ivasnH fair." 

" Fair ! " cried his father, hoarsely. " Fair ! Oh, the 
devil ! " He sat down, clenching his hands. The blood 
rose in his face. 

" Did you wish to be unfair ? " 

"Yes!" shouted Deed. "Yes! I wished to be all 
that you imply ! I wished to be unfair to both of you ! " 

" Both of us ! " exclaimed Philip, turning pale. 

" Oh, I know what you think ! I wished to be unfair 
to Jasper, and to do it I must be doubly unfair to you, 
and I didn't care. You don't say it. You talk of Jasper." 

" Father, can you think — ? " 

" Yes — more than you say." 

Philip grew white about the nostrils. " I have said 
all that I mean. I say it's shabby to freeze Jasper out in 
his absence ; I say that you are free to use whatever share 
I may claim in the range as you like. But not for that. 
I won't be a party to it. I won't stand by and see you do 
such a wrong to yourself." 

" Say what you mean ! " cried his father, with an im- 
plication in his voice which maddened Philip beyond 
control. 

" Father ! " he cried warningly. 

Deed thrust his hands into his pockets, and, facing 
him with deliberate bitterness, looked into his eyes. " I 
will pay you every penny of your d fifty thousand dol- 
lars before you are twenty-four hours older." 

For a moment Philip stared at his father in speechless 
anger. Then with a cry of rage he burst from the room. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 127 



VII. 

The clerk in the office spared a single gleam of the 
eye, which was busy challenging the newcomers by the 
evening express from Denver — looking them into the 
earth and pardoning them into existence again long 
enough to send them aloft in the care of " Front," — to 
observe Philip's quick push through the office, The 
crowd parted before his blind look and determined arm, 
and in a moment he was in the air, reeling up the street, 
with his veins aflame and his tongue hot upon his lips. 

His anger bore him on through the mob that com- 
monly fills the sidewalk to its edge at night in Leadville. 
They gave way before his white face and set look. He 
did not know where he was going until a sharp ascent on 
the outskirts of the town took his breath in the manner 
of lesser elevations at the altitude of Leadville. He 
paused on the summit, and, snatching off his hat, bared 
his moist forehead and beating head. 

The sweet, strong, uplifting keenness of the mountain 
air swept through his brain. He pushed back the thick 
hair about his brow, and stared up at the stars, shining 
down upon him through an atmosphere fined to an ethe- 
real rarity. The intolerable exaltation of the air played 
upon his fevered spirit. 

Standing there, he said to himself that he could never 
forgive his father ; the affront was too deep, the miscon- 
ception too gross. That he should think him capable of 
such meanness ; that he should be ready on the suggestion 
of an instant to class him with Jasper ; above all, that 
he should asperse him with the thought that he could 



128 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

use a pretended impulse of fairness to a man who had 
done him a wrong — an impulse of generosity, if one liked 
(standing out there in the air Philip said to himself that, 
after all, it was generous), to cloak a low appeal for him- 
self — it was too much ! It was not what any man could 
be expected to forgive another. He repeated to himself 
often that he did not care that he was his father. No 
human relationship could give a man the right to insult 
another like that. 

And then, in a moment, he laughed at the boyish self- 
assertion, and could have wept for his father. The air 
was really too tense ; he could not think in it. 

He recalled inconsequently that he had meant to ask 
his father to lend him $400. The recollection was a fresh 
pain. It seemed to him that his father could not have 
suspected him in just that way if he had not given him 
good cause to know that he was always in want of money 
— that the whole question of money ruled him, at times, 
in a way which he himself could not reconcile with 
better things in his nature. JSTo wonder his father had 
thought his urgency interested. Had he ever shown him- 
self disinterested where money was involved ? 

As he went back through the town he thought he 
would go straight to his father and make it right for 
him. But the low instinct of pride, which Philip was 
disposed in heated moments to take for the noblest thing 
in himself, withheld him. He could not do it. Finally, 
perhaps, he would do it — indeed, the subtle second con- 
sciousness knew very well that in the end he must do it, 
for he could not live unreconciled to his father; the 
amiable need, mixed of generosity and selfishness, to live 
at one with those nearest him would force him to it at 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 129 

last; and he knew that he could never let his father 
make the advance. That would be too shameful ; yet he 
must refuse himself the happiness of going to bed with 
it righted. 

He knew for a folly the honour that he did the shallow 
conceit of dignity, in waiting ; but he could not get him- 
self into. the door of the hotel and up the stairs to his 
father's room when the time came. He crossed over to 
the other side of the street when he reached the hotel, and 
then he saw that his father's light was out. He told him- 
self, now, that he had probably meant to do it to-night, 
after all ; that he had been postponing it until he should 
have had a glass of something at Pop Wyman's to clear 
his head ; and he believed that he was sorry his father 
had gone to bed. But when he found him playing at the 
faro-table, where he paused for a moment, after his glass 
at the bar, he sheered away hastily, avoiding his eye ; and 
went unhappily down Chestnut street, plunging into the 
first dance-hall he passed, and suffering one of the " beer- 
jerkers " to wheedle him into treating her to a mint-julep. 
She said she never took anything but mint- juleps. He 
saw again remorsefully the look on his father's face as he 
bent over the faro-table (he was losing heavily), while he 
chaffed the girl vaguely, from some exterior nimbus of 
intelligence, on her fad for mint-juleps. When she would 
have dragged him upon the floor, however, to join the 
quadrille that was forming, he broke away without cere- 
mony, and made for the door. 

The miners in their blue shirts and brown, copper- 
riveted trousers stuck into their boots, and with their 
armories belted around their waists, beat time to the mu- 
sic which was just beginning in the hot and reeking hall, 



130 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

dimly lighted by kerosene-lamps. One of them shouted 
after him by name to come back. Philip, as he turned 
for a moment at the door, recognized the speaker for a 
man he had known at Piflon. It was young Hafferton, 
the tutor who had given up his post at Dartmouth to 
come "West for consumption, and, recovering, had not yet 
found enough money to take him back. He had been the 
single reporter of the daily paper at Pinon. He had a 
long nose and a thin, straggling beard, and wore glasses. 
Philip supposed he was working the mine he used to talk 
to him about taking, with half a dozen other impecunious 
young men of his own sort, on a lease. 

" Oh, hello, Hafferton ! " he said, in listless recogni- 
tion. He went back for a moment to shake hands with 
him over the rail dividing the dancing-floor from the 
drinking-bar. Hafferton told him that, as he had sup- 
posed, he was working the " Come to me Quickly " on 
a lease. They were hiring no labour, but putting in their 
own. They had found good pay dirt, he said, and were 
doing well. He hoped to start for home in the spring, 
and to have a little left when he got back to keep him go- 
ing until he could find something to do again. He was 
tired of mining. He had given up all the brave hopes 
with which he had begun. He was content to take a fair 
day's wages out of their leased claim day by day, if he 
might. 

"I suppose we shall think of this as a stereopticon 
view we've seen, rather than as a real experience, a year 
or two hence, when we're back East," said Hafferton, 
glancing about the dingy room. " But we must take what 
fun's moving. ' Everything goes in Colorado,' " he said, 
repeating the current slang phrase. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 131 

Philip refused the inclusion of himself in this point 
of view with a glance which should have explained to Haf- 
ferton what an ass he was. But Hafferton went on, un- 
disquieted : 

"You're down on your ranch, now, I suppose?" 
Philip's plans for leaving Pinon had been known before 
Hafferton left for Leadville. 

" I've no ranch," growled Philip, ungraciously. 

" Why, but I thought — " began Hafferton, doubtfully, 
beginning to feel the distance in Philip's manner. 

" I know you did. So did I." 

" Somebody jumped your claim ? " 

Philip surveyed him a moment, wondering^if he could 
have heard anything. "No," said he, truculently, as if 
Haiferton was likely to dispute it; "I sold it." 

" Oh ! " exclaimed Hafferton. He had a chirpy man- 
ner, and a polite little voice which twisted every nerve in 
Philip. " I hope you got a good price for it." 

He looked at Philip uncertainly. " I think they're 
waiting for me," he said, glancing behind him, where the 
three sets on the floor were making the preliminary bows 
to their partners. His own young lady was beckoning to 
him. " So long ! " he said, waving his hand lightly as he 
disappeared. 

At the theatre across the way Philip made out, through 
the cloud of tobacco-smoke hovering between him and the 
stage, an elderly woman in a ball-dress, the skirt of which 
reached to her knees. She was describing to the audience 
from the footlights in song how she met her " Harry " on 
Carbonate Hill every pleasant afternoon at the change of 
shifts. The burden of the matter was that Harry was 
" such a nice young man ! " Philip found himself waiting 



132 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

for the wriggle with which the cracked voice attacked this 
phrase at the end of each stanza; and came to wonder 
dully, as she would begin the amorous tale afresh, how she 
was going to connect the sense of this stanza at the end 
with her central truth, while the thought went buzzing in 
his head : " He means to raise that money to-morrow. 
How?" 

The epithets which he would use against himself on 
ordinary occasions of remorse did not enough blacken his 
act. How could he have allowed the talk with his father, 
which he had meant should console him with the knowl- 
edge that he, at least, remained faithful to him, to issue in 
an estrangement between them, and in this miserable re- 
solve of his father's to pay him a foolish debt of pride ? 
His father had been trying. Oh, of course. But might 
he not have guessed that he must be trying ? He knew 
his temper. Knowing the fine, the good, the generous 
man behind it, had he ever cared for that before ? And 
remembering the trial through which he had just passed, 
recalling that he had found him still trembling from the 
hurt that Jasper had dealt him, should he not have for- 
borne ? Should he not, at all events and at all costs, have 
avoided losing his second son to him ? But what he had 
implied was intolerable ; he turned hot at thought of it. 
Yet if to be imagined so base was maddening, what must 
it not be to his father to think him so ? He rose with the 
determination to hunt up his father, and to make him 
know his thought before he slept. They could settle the 
Jasper question another time. Just now his only anxiety 
was for reconciliation. 

He refused the return-check offered him by the frowsy 
being who guarded the exit to the theatre. The assurance 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 133 

that Harry was " such a nice young man " followed him 
with a dying quaver and simper into the street. 

On the sidewalk he encountered Vertner. It appeared 
that the latter had come up to Leadville from Maverick to 
see Deed about a mine they were interested in together — 
to speak accurately, a mine which Vertner had induced 
Deed to join him in purchasing. The mine was filling 
with water, and it was a question between putting in ex- 
pensive machinery to pump it out, and abandoning it. 
Vertner had in his pocket an assay of the vein they were 
working. 

" Your father says we can't afford to go on with it ; 
says lie hasn't got any money (I believe him, for he was 
just trying to borrow $25,000 when I struck him) ; but I 
say we can't afford to give it up. Taber might ; we can't. 
It's a chance in a lifetime. With dirt like that in sight, 
it's only the rich who can afford to economize. You don't 
happen to have $10,000 in your clothes, do you ? " 

" No," said Philip ; " I was just going to ask you if 
you knew where I could borrow $50,000." 

Vertner stopped short (they were walking together 
towards Harrison Avenue), taking Philip unceremoni- 
ously by the arm. " See here, put me on to this thing ! 
What are you and your father up to ? Is there a dollar 
in it?" 

" Aren't you in schemes enough, Vertner ? " he asked, 
to turn the subject. 

" No, my boy. There are not schemes enough in the 
cosmos for the energy I feel in myself when I get up any 
of these fine mornings. And the mints don't manufac- 
ture the money that I feel I could use. What's the use 
of living if you haven't a new idea for the new day, as it 



134 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

comes along ? These fellows that get an idea when they 
are eighteen, and spread it thin over the rest of their lives, 
to make it last, give me a pain. Come, whisper it to your 
uncle ! What are you up to — you and your father ? " 

" Oh, drop it, Vertner ! " cried Philip, wearily. 

Vertner's quick ear caught the accent of pain in his 
voice. " Oh, well, now you've got to tell me, or own up 
that you won't let a fellow help you. The scheme is 
dropped with pleasure. I'm starting a popular subscrip- 
tion that's worth two of it. I call it ' Vertner's Grand 
Popular Subscription for the Presentation to Philip Deed, 
Esq., of a Nickel- Plated Derrick to be Employed in Ele- 
vating Him from some Confounded Muss.' " He wrote 
the words on the air with a fluent hand as they walked up 
Harrison Avenue towards the hotel. The crowd had be- 
gun to disperse ; the shops were dark, and the gambling- 
houses cast the only light, save that of the electric lamps, 
upon the street from behind their glass fronts. " There's 
going to be one subscriber to my fund — just one. If you 
want $50,000, you've got to have it, and I'm going to get 
it for you." 

" It's deuced white of you, Vertner," said Philip, with 
gloomy gratitude ; " but you can't do it. I want it to- 
morrow." He threw away his cigarette and began rolling 
another. " Try something possible. Prevent my father 
from borrowing $25,000. It will do me the same service." 

" Oh, come ! I call for a show-down ! " cried Vertner. 
"/ don't know what you are driving at." 

" My father has a crazy notion of paying me $50,000 
to-morrow. Other men would threaten it. He will do 
it. He fancies — he thinks — " Philip gulped down the 
lump in his throat — " he has an idea that I am kick- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 135 

ing about that business with Jasper. You know about 
that?" 

" No," said Yertner, a quickening glance of curiosity 
passing over his shrewd face ; " I don't. What was it?" 

Philip told him fully, as they passed under an electric 
lamp, the knife-edge glare of which showed their faces, 
and would have tempted an observer to note the contrast 
between them — to remark how Philip's sinewy bulk made 
more than its impression by the side of Vertner's slight, 
wiry build, thin, alert little face, and medium stature ; 
and how Vertner, who, in his own way, was as sufficient 
as the driving-wheel of an engine, took an aspect of in- 
effectiveness from the power expressing itself in every line 
of Philip's frame. 

The deceptive outward look of ineffectiveness, which 
was accented by contrast with Philip, was always what 
impressed those who met Yertner for the first time ; 
and coupled with the still, sleepy gaze habitually dwelling 
in his eyes while he was engaged in the approaches to 
" talking business," it had often encouraged men with 
whom he dealt in his early Colorado days to trade on the 
unsophistication of an under-endowed young innocent — 
as, with a twinkling eye, Yertner said, in the Western 
slang that often displaced the inadequacies of his Massa- 
chusetts English, " It was the kind of case where a man 
picks you up for a sucker, and lays you down for a shark." 

To the casual eye Yertner looked about Philip's age, 
not because he was not seven years older, but because 
Philip's superior height and weight, his tanned cheek, 
heavy mustache, high-growing hair, lips closed firmly on 
each other from habit, and a certain look of manly self- 
command in his quiet eyes, added five or six years to his 



136 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

twenty-three summers ; while Vertner, who went always 
clean shaven, whose hair was fair and thin, whose smooth, 
clever, keen, good-humoured face had the incurable boy- 
ish look through all its shrewdness, that every one will re- 
member in some man-boy he knows — Vertner, I say, pro- 
cured a diminution of his thirty years by six or seven in 
the eyes of the casual observer. The observer, when he 
came to know him better, would have perceived the 
shrewd lines beginning to gather at the corners of his 
mouth. By this time he would have liked Vertner, or he 
might have gone on to add that it was a sophisticated, 
even a calculating mouth ; and might have found some- 
thing hard in those shrewd lines. 

" Father imagines," concluded Philip, as they moved 
on, — " something I said gave him the idea, — that I feel my- 
self swindled by what he did — selling Jasper out. You 
know my father. He doesn't need facts for his anger, and 
what I said was easily misunderstood. It was in the na- 
ture of the thing. One word for Jasper looked like two 
for myself. It ended in his swearing that he would pay 
me my third share in the ranch within twenty-four hours. 
That was to-night. He had the $25,000 by him from the 
sale of the ranch. That's plain enough from his trying to 
borrow only $25,000. But he can no more raise $25,000 
more by to-morrow, as things are with him, than you can, 
Vertner. He'll do it though. You know that. And he'll 
do it at a cost that he will pay for with every moment of 
his life afterward." 

" Um. You wouldn't need the — the trifle you mention 
very long, would you ? " 

" Long enough to lend it to my father, take it from 
him, and pay it back." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 137 

" You're not thinking of lending it to him yourself, I 
take it. There is to be somebody iu between ? " 

" Certainly. I suppose it wouldn't be hard to find a 
man generous enough to lend father $25,000 of my money 
without security if I could get the $25,000." 

They were at the door of a saloon. Philip said he had 
just been drinking, and wanted nothing; but he went in 
with Vertner, who ordered vermuth, and insisted on his 
taking something with him. Vertner had learned to drink 
vermuth in the fast set into which he had fallen at the 
preparatory school from which there had once been an in- 
tention of sending him to Harvard. 

" No ; no more," said Philip, shaking his head in an- 
swer to Vertner 's urgence, after their one glass together. 

" Well, then, take my good advice," said Vertner, as 
they went out into the street together. " Take something 
with me. If I were in your shoes, I'd skip." 

" Oh, no, you wouldn't, Vertner. You'd know my 
father if you'd lived in my shoes as long as I have, and 
you'd see the folly of it. He'll pay that money over to me 
just the same, you know, whether I am here to take it in 
person or not. It's not difficult to deposit a check to my 
credit at his bank, and notify me by wire. If I am going 
to attempt refusing it, I can do it better by staying. The 
other way I should be helpless. If I stay, though I can't 
really refuse it, perhaps I can manage what will come to 
the same thing." 

" Oh, all right," exclaimed Vertner, good-naturedly 
abandoning the point. " Count on me." 

They walked Harrison Avenue for an hour or more, 
discussing plans for preventing Deed from borrowing the 
money. Philip could not have given a name to his fears. 



138 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

He merely knew that since his father had stripped himself 
of the ranch he could not lay hands at such notice on 
$25,000 of his own ; and he knew no less well that some- 
where, in some way, he would lay hands on it, and would 
pay it over to him, if he would let him, next day, to- 
gether with $25,000 more. He was haunted by a strange 
dread. 

They went into one saloon and another. Philip was 
restless. At several places they overheard talk about Deed. 
It was one o'clock, and they had dropped into St. Anne's 
Eest, when Philip, as he put his glass to his lips (he was 
drinking too much, and was conscious of it, but was in- 
capable of stopping), heard a red-faced man standing next 
him at the bar, say, with an oath : 

" Just my luck ! Deed and I are on this here Church 
Building Fund together. Our committee subscribed the 
square thing, and now Deed'll shirk his share when the 
time comes, and the committee'll have to make up his sub- 
scription among themselves. I always said we ought to 
have subscribed it separately 'stid of as a committee ; but 
Hank Jackson wanted to keep his subscription dark. He 
wasn't ponying up as much as usual. Shouldn't wonder 
if he was going same way as Deed. ' Iron Silver ' or 
' Morning Star,' did you say ? " 

His companion, whose florid face was supported upon 
a bull neck, and whose mustache had been trained to wan- 
ton in a grandiose curve, and to hang its spreading boughs 
within easy twirling distance of his collar, said that it was 
the " Iron Silver " he had spoken of. 

" He must be hard up ! Men in this town ain't put- 
ting up ' Iron Silver ' stock even when they want to bor- 
row $25,000 pretty bad — not very brash ! " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 139 

Philip had put down his glass. His muscles grew 
rigid. The impulse to seize the bull neck, and to choke 
the man until he denied it, was a mastering need ; but he 
forbore. Perhaps the man spoke the truth. He turned 
pale, and pinched his eyes with his fingers, and beat his 
head to clear his brain of the fumes of the liquor he had 
drunk. " Come ! " he cried to Vertner, clutching his arm. 
Vertner stood still, listening. " Come ! " he repeated 
hoarsely. 

"You heard?" he said, when they were outside, in 
the cold, strong air. 

" Yes. The thing's got to be stopped ! I'm with 
you." 

" Stopped ! " exclaimed Philip. " Stopped ! My God, 
man, do you know whose ' Iron Silver ' shares those are ? " 

" Your father's." 

" Humph ! Listen ! " He whispered in his ear. 

Vertner started. Under the ghostly glare of the elec- 
tric light his face paled. He repeated Philip's word in 
the same whisper. He caught his arm vehemently, in- 
quiringly. 

Philip nodded. " Come ! " he said. 

"Where?" 

" To the telegraph-office." 

" It's closed." 

" They'll open it for a thing like this. 3 ' 

" What are you going to do ? " 

" Do f I'm going to get that money." 

Vertner went with him. 



140 BENEFITS FORGOT. 



VIII. 

Beatrice did not wholly respect her fancy that she 
occasionally saw a look of dogged repression or patient 
pain in Dr. Ernfield's eyes lately. She had fallen into 
the wifely habit of seeing things a little qualified by her 
husband's probable comments on her observations; and 
she knew that Vertner would make fun of her if she told 
him of this fancy. But the listless step which had re- 
placed the briskness prevailing through the worst of his 
former weakness, and the growing haggardness of his 
whole outward aspect, were things which any one must 
see, she said to herself after a day or two. She wondered 
that Margaret, who saw so much of him, appeared to be 
blind to them ; but then, Margaret was blind. For her 
part, she resolved to say nothing. It was not her affair. 

Fred Keif ner, his stable-boy and factotum, the warmth 
of whose affection for his employer was one of the jokes 
of the town, noticed the change, at all events, imme- 
diately, and told at home that " Doc was growin' peaked 
ag'in, and losin' all he'd gained." Fred drove Ernfield 
about, and was frequently at the house. Beatrice and 
Margaret often exchanged a word with him : his loyal 
adoration of the doctor, taking no account of the derision 
it won him among boys of his own age, touched them. 

" It don't make no difference to a feller what he does 
for a trick ! " he had said at some intimation from 
Beatrice on one occasion that his fealty might lose him 
caste among the boys. He said it with the exaltation of 
a noble of King Henry's at Ivry, chanting, 

And be our oriflamme to-day, King Henry of Navarre! 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 141 

And Beatrice gladly abandoned him to the consequences 
of his faith to his liege. 

His talk about Ernfield's health, reaching Beatrice at 
last through her kitchen, suffused her prophetic soul with 
a glow of confirmation not all pain. "When it finally 
reached Margaret, through Beatrice, she took shame to 
herself for having leaned on him so much. She recog- 
nized that, in the week since Deed's departure, she had 
fallen into a habit of dependence upon him for part of 
her daily support — -a habit which she could not help see- 
ing was growing upon her. A perception of the way in 
which others must have leaned on his generous strength, 
if she, so entirely accustomed to stand alone, could fall 
in a few days into the habit, overwhelmed her at the same 
moment. In the light of this she seemed to understand 
how he had come to his present condition. 

When Margaret had worked so much out in her own 
mind, she had a conscience about suffering him in any 
way to help her bear the weight of her own misery. But 
her resolve to deny herself the support of his strength 
was found to be less easily carried out by a mere exertion 
of will than some of her other resolves. If she was 
to see him at all she discovered that he must con- 
stantly lend her a part of himself unconsciously. It 
was not a question whether she could feel free to accept 
the beneficent sturdiness that walled her about from the 
poignant world that she dared not yet take a look at, 
and sustained her from day to day in her own sense 
of the duty that remains, though pleasure goes. It ex- 
isted for her, as the sun exists; if she put herself in 
the way of its rays she could not be less than warm if 
she would. 



142 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

When, at length, she took this scruple to Beatrice, she 
was openly scorned for it. 

" But what a girl it is ! " cried Beatrice. " Poke, 
poke, poke at a fire that even your conscience couldn't 
prod into burning a fly ; and let a regular conflagration — 
a Chicago fire — kindle under your very nose! Mar- 
garet ! " she exclaimed with an indescribable accent of 
despair. 

" Why, what in the world have I done ? " asked Mar- 
garet. 

" I don't know whether you have done it yet ; but if 
you haven't, it's his character rather than your careful- 
ness that's to be thanked for it. You remember what I 
used to tell you before — before the other day. You 
wouldn't believe it then. You wouldn't tell him, or let 
Mm tell him, of your engagement. But I've seen it going 
on this five weeks. A week ago it mightn't have been 
plain to a girl whose modesty won't let her believe that 
she can matter to anybody. But even to her it must be 
plain now. Maggie ! Surely you've seen ! " 

They were seated in the room above the parlour in 
Beatrice's little two-story house. Beatrice was running a 
long seam on a pinafore of green gingham for her baby, 
and, bent over the sewing-machine, in this motherly oc- 
cupation, and delivering herself of these sagacities, the 
air of matronly wisdom seemed to have descended upon 
her. 

When Margaret took her meaning, after a moment, 
the shame of it seemed as bad as the newspaper article — 
worse, indeed, for of that she had read only a dozen lines, 
which it was possible to forget ; but of this she tasted the 
entire ignominy. She did not know what to say. She 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 143 

wanted to fall on Deed's shoulder, and to beg his protec- 
tion from such thoughts. Why was he not here to shield 
her from them ? But her next reflection was for Ernfield. 

" Beatrice ! " she cried. " I wonder at you ! " 

" I thought you would," Beatrice answered calmly. 
" But it is really time, dear, I made you wonder. I often 
try to fancy what such people as I can be made for, you 
know, Maggie. But I never wonder when I am with you. 
It's our business to cut a path for the feet of people like 
you, who are made to walk with their heads in the 
clouds." 

" It's an insult to him ! " breathed Margaret, irrele- 
vantly. 

" Of course ; and an indignity to you, and an open 
affront to Mr. Deed. Don't imagine I don't know that. 
But it's necessary to say it, all the same." 

"How can you think such a thing of him?" cried 
Margaret, indignantly. She was scarlet. She put back the 
lock that habitually strayed into her eyes with a gesture 
of self-control, and went on with the crocheting on which 
she was engaged. 

" Dear Maggie, he is only a man," returned Beatrice, 
convincingly. u What makes you think him so different 
from other men ? " 

" Because he is, I think, for one reason," Margaret re- 
turned, studying attentively the baby sack she was making 
for Beatrice, for a lost stitch. " But if he were ever so 
like, it would not be cause to suppose him capable of 
such — " She paused inconclusively, and bent her eyes 
upon the work again. It had been a fortunate resource 
since she had been unable to fix her mind on reading or 
any of her usual occupations. One could think, one could 
10 



144 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

even be as miserable as one liked, or as one must, while 
one crocheted. " You seem to forget, Beatrice," she went 
on quietly, after a moment, " that he is very ill — dying, 
perhaps, and that I am — " She did not know how to 
say what she was. 

" Why, you dear, crazy, heavenly-minded, impractical 
thing ! " cried Beatrice, trying not to laugh. " Since 
when did men love women less when they were ill ? The 
people who are most against woman — who won't have her 
on any terms — agree that she is a famous nurse ! Mag- 
gie ! " she exclaimed, at a look of deep pain on Margaret's 
face, " I don't mean that. I mean only that men are just 
as capable of falling in love with a woman on a death-bed 
as on horseback, or on a front piazza, in the bloom of 
health. What has that to do with it ? And as to your 
other objection, it's just no objection at all. He can't 
know that you hold yourself no less bound to— to him be- 
cause — because of things. He can't be expected to im- 
agine that you are abhorring him and being loyal to him 
in a breath. Come ! Be fair, Margaret ! You must own 
that there is no reason why the man shouldn't have tum- 
bled into love with you. The next thing is to rescue him." 

" If you mean that I am to show him by my manner 
that I know him to have such a feeling, if you mean that 
I am to insult him, I'm sure you must know I could never 
do it. To think it would be bad enough ; and I don't 
think it. To give an idea like that the sanction of a word, 
a silence, a look — Beatrice ! " she cried, in an indescribable 
tone of injury, " there are things which even you must not 
say ! " She went on with her crocheting in silence ; the 
quiet, steady little push of her forefinger, as it ran along 
the needle and caught the stitch, seemed, for the moment, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 145 

the embodiment of her sober view of life. Beatrice re- 
mained quelled, but unconvinced. 

Margaret's judiciousness could not keep a certain 
change out of her manner toward him, of course, when 
he came again. Beatrice, though she had retired from 
the contest defeated, had contrived to poison her thought 
of him with consciousness. But it was pleasant to see that 
he seemed to have no sense of the change. 

Ernfield continued to come, and Margaret allowed her- 
self without a prick of conscience to look forward more 
and more to the cheer he brought into the desolate days 
on which she had fallen. It was certainly true that Mar- 
garet always saw her own point of view so plainly, and 
was so simply faithful to it, that she was in danger of 
reckoning too confidently upon the counterpart of her own 
feeling in another. It was at least a faith that any one 
understanding it must have abused with reluctance ; and 
in so far she was protected by her very rashness. But 
Beatrice was probably on unassailable ground in thinking 
it the reverse of worldly wise. 

Yet if Margaret had been bothered by two consciences 
about him, instead of feeling quite free with her one, her 
need for distraction from the gnawing of her thoughts 
must have been equally real and equally irresistible. She 
could not turn over in her mind the scene with Deed on 
that morning quite every moment in the day. She must 
have gone mad if no diversion had offered from the circle 
in which she had come to argue about her conduct on her 
wedding-day. Sometimes, in desperation, she would go 
into Maverick with Beatrice — the Vertners lived just out- 
side the town — and wait about while Beatrice did her 
marketing. She still hesitated before the thought of re- 



146 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

turning the calls which had been made upon her, in her 
capacity of stranger, during the month preceding her 
wedding-day. When she said she did not care what peo- 
ple said, she exaggerated as little as any one who has made 
that hardy statement can ever have done ; but she owned 
to herself that, just at first, she could not like to court the 
questions, and the polite and indirect, but not the less 
rasping, comment that she must meet if she made these 
calls. 

It was different with Dorothy, who had reached Mav- 
erick after that fatal day, and might be supposed not to be 
privy to her shame. Of course Margaret knew that she 
must know; but it was quite possible between them to 
sustain the convention that she didn't. Dorothy would 
sometimes come to the house, as they became better 
friends, and sit for an hour or more accepting Beatrice's 
advice about arranging the house they had taken, while 
she was really listening to Margaret's silence. Sometimes 
she would find Margaret alone, and would make certain 
modest and doubtful advances. She liked her without 
being sure she understood her. They exchanged many 
confidences short of the real ones. They never spoke of 
Deed, of course. 

Maurice had preached a trial sermon, and was staying 
on at Maverick in the hope of receiving a call to the pul- 
pit of St. John's. 

Ernfield did not cease to be a question between Bea- 
trice and Margaret ; but it was not until Margaret ac- 
cepted an invitation from him to ride up TJte Pass with 
him, that Beatrice definitively washed her hands of her. 

Ernfield and Margaret skirted the town, and directed 
their horses towards the gulch that opened beyond the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 147 

railway round-house between the small, bare red hills that 
lay just without the limits of Maverick to the north. 
These hills, which rose from the plain abruptly, cut off 
the view of the great mountains behind them unless one 
climbed to their summits, when the horizon was seen to 
be populous with snow-peaks. 

The town, after they had passed out of the narrow 
belt that was really " city," and which was densely popu- 
lated by as many as five families to the acre, strayed lack- 
adaisically along their road, until it reached the edge of 
the hills, where it paused at an Irishman's cabin so sud- 
denly that, after turning the first curve leading into the 
ravine, Ernfield and Margaret seemed to themselves as 
much alone as if Maverick were not engaged in rustling 
for the mighty dollar just around the bend. 

The bridle-path, followed by their ponies at a canter, 
turned with the windings of the ravine, at the bottom of 
which a stream might once have run. The rocks, rising 
in varicoloured masses to the high, brown hills above their 
heads, would sometimes fall back, and leave a space a 
hundred yards wide or more, in which the grass grew 
rankly, but not greenly, in the manner of the herbage of 
the West. In the early morning it had seemed cold 
enough for snow ; but that was no hindrance to weather 
which habitually takes the Indian summer bit between its 
teeth just after breakfast every morning and makes a 
break for the sparkle, the keenness, the unfailing sunni- 
ness of the typical Colorado day. It was December, but 
in the sun at this hour it seemed like a day in June. 

Half an hour after they had entered the ravine their 
horses stood upon a height. The path wound up to this 
point out of the gulch on its way to the pass. Indeed, 



148 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

this was the beginning of what was known as the pass — a 
road between the hills, which if one followed it far enough 
and high enough would bring one to Colorado Springs. 
They were on the summit of the first considerable rise of 
the foot-hills towards the mountains, and their station 
commanded the beautiful valley in the centre of which 
Maverick spread its shabby architecture and sprawling 
design. Behind, at their feet, lay a small park, into 
which the hills dipped from all sides, and through the 
midst of which a thready brook ran. Margaret, who had 
seen nothing so vast as this bewildering prospect, run- 
ning on all sides to the horizon, caught her breath at the 
expanse. 

The sunshine, bathing with an enchanting radiance 
the tops of the white peaks far on the thither side of the 
valley, danced above the plain on which Maverick sat. 
The kindling air that breathed about them on their 
height seemed, as always in Colorado, to be drinking the 
sunshine and making it part of its substance, as one is 
sure the nobler wines must have done, in their grape 
days. 

In this atmosphere everything was seen afresh, and 
Margaret found all her thoughts of the time since she had 
parted with Deed discovering themselves in new aspects, 
as she and Ernfield looked out on this great world — this 
world thrilled with its own silence. In the face of the 
boundless light and air and earth, and the limitless sweet- 
ness of the sunlight, her world, too, seemed large and 
serene again. 

" We talk of dying when we are sorry," she said to 
him. " Suppose we should be taken at our word, and re- 
member too late that this is life. Whoa, pony ! " She 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 149 

leaned over and patted the restive animal's neck. She 
circled the hills with her eyes as she looked up again. " I 
believe I am accustomed to think that all the hard things 
are the real life ; and I've been sure of it lately." The 
tacit reference to her trouble escaped her unconsciously. 
" But when one sees things like this, one is not sure." 

" I don't know," said Ernfield. " I should think one 
might be sure they are not. The other things are nearer 
— the miseries and pains and disappointments ; and I sup- 
pose they keep tugging at every one's skirts, and crying 
that they are life. But it's an awful whopper, you may be 
sure. If they are, the moon is our day, and the sun is the 
dead body." 

He alighted to tighten the cinch of his saddle; the 
pony went through a series of obstructive manoeuvres that 
gave pause to the conversation for a few moments. 

" I wish I could be as confident," said Margaret when 
the animal was still. " But the things you speak of, Dr. 
Ernfield— don't you see that in one fashion or another 
they are so many ways of disabusing us of our cozy conceit 
that personal happiness is the main affair ? And that, at 
least, we must be sure is not true. Can the wretchedness 
through which we learn that the world is not a contrivance 
for ministering to our self-love, but has other business in 
hand, such as crushing it, for example, be anything but 
very right ? " 

" Oh, I suppose not," returned Ernfield, smiling ; " but 
how about the pink light on Ouray over there ? Isn't that 
right too ? " He shook his head. " I shall never believe, 
Miss Derwenter, that the sun in eclipse is the normal 
thing. I have an endless faith — since you speak of con- 
trivances — that the sun was mainly invented for shining 



150 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

purposes ; and I'm sure we weren't meant to grudge our- 
selves its shining." 

" Perhaps," murmured Margaret. " Perhaps ! " Then, 
after a moment, she added, " You have a cheerful view of 
life, Dr. Ernfield." 

Ernfield laughed. " Eather necessary, don't you think ? 
I've not enough left to waste in quibbles." It was the 
first time that he had referred to his condition. 

" Don't say that," she begged. " You are going to get 
well. Since you talk of not grudging ourselves the sun's 
shining, you mustn't grudge yourself that certainty. It 
has to be. Surely we have not all the responsibilities. 
And would it not be a shameful thing to believe that all 
your — your helpfulness and strength, Dr. Ernfield (I must 
speak plainly if I speak at all, you see), should be taken 
from the world, while there are so many thousand drones 
and incapables left to go instead, and so many thousand 
tired bodies and minds left behind to weary for the help 
that you might give them ? I can't believe that, Dr. Ern- 
field, any more than you can believe what — what you were 
just saying," she concluded, with a sense of having said 
too much, yet with a pleasure in having let him know her 
feeling. 

" Why, what an abandoned moralist you are, Miss 
Derwenter ! " 

He caught his rein upon his arm, and made his pony 
stand where he could tighten the cinch on her saddle, as 
he said : " Who was it who was saying a moment ago that 
the teaching of life seemed to be that it did not exist for 
us ? And here you would have me flatter myself with the 
old fiction that I — that any man — can count, that fate 
ought to clap its eye on me and save me forthwith to be a 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 151 

comfort to the world's declining years. The world will 
decline nicely, thank you, without me — aren't you sure of 
that?" 

His head was down against the pony's side, as he gave 
the cinch the final twist. Pulling up a cinch takes the 
breath. But she fancied the long inspiration he drew, as 
he exclaimed " There ! " and put the strap at the end of 
the cinch through the last ring, was more like a sigh. 

" And besides," he went on, after a moment, " there's 
a thing or so to be said in favour of death. I wonder the 
poets don't try to say it more, instead of gasping before it 
in the craven rhymes that seem to please them so awfully. 
It's a pity, I grant you, that other people have to die ; but 
I never could see why it should be so intolerable a thought 
to one's self. I mean, of course, if you have a certain 
thought about death," he added gravely — " the Christian's 
thought, I suppose we should call it." 

" But — " she began, and stopped impotently. 

" Ah, yes," he owned ; " I admit the * but.' The slow 
ignominy of this stupid trouble of mine, you were going 
to say — the creeping weakness. It's true. I should have 
chosen a great deal better if I'd arranged my own way of 
going : any one who knows what a luxurious dog I am 
down at the bottom of my shirking heart would believe 
that of me, I hope. But I wasn't asked." He glanced at 
her with a smile. " No, no ! " exclaimed he, as she opened 
her lips to reply ; " don't try to deny it for me. It's very 
good of you ; but it's no use, you know. I am a physician. 
I don't deceive myself. If I could only believe in your 
denial, you know, I should be glad enough to let you deny 
it for me by the hour. Or rather, I should be glad to 
have you affirm the other thing for me. To affirm," he 



152 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

said dreamily ; " it's the only thing in the least worth 
while." 

Margaret hesitated a moment. Then she said shyly : 
" Do you know, Dr. Ernfield, I believe that is what has 
worn you out — affirming for other people. Nervous 
prostration — it's a kind of physical agnosticism, don't you 
think ? It seems as if we didn't even believe in our own 
bodies any more." 

" Yqu are at least twice too acute for comfort, Miss 
Derwenter," he said, smiling. " My breakdown wasn't 
due to anything so amiable. It was really because I 
hadn't the temperance to stop there. The habit of 
absolute power is an irresistible one, I suppose. It made 
a despot of me, I know ; and whatever my subjects might 
tell you of their awful case,— for I assure you I showed 
no pity, — it is an exhausting thing to be a despot." 

" What nonsense ! " She smiled. 

" No, no ! " he disclaimed : " it's only right that my 
beastly satisfaction with myself should be taken down a 
peg or two. I accept this as my punishment." Margaret's 
lips framed a sound; but he stopped her. "No; it's 
not gammon, what I tell you. It's fact. I was out- 
rageous about the whole business. I was young when I 
began, and I had a little success quite soon. It made me 
sure — infernally, intolerably sure. I led my patients a 
devil of a life. Don't think I'm inventing. That would 
be too shameful. Any of them would tell you as much — 
even those I have done something for ; those more than 
the others, perhaps. Oh, I was a brute, Miss Derwenter, 
whatever you think. But I've got my pay. It's wearing 
being a brute." He smiled at her ; but she saw that he 
was in deadly earnest. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 153 

" I don't know what you were, of course, Dr. Ernfield," 
she said simply," though I don't believe you were any- 
thing like that. Only one thing is clear to me — you must 
live to be more of the same sort." 

He bit his lip, and turned his head that she might not 
see his face. " I assure you," he said huskily, " you must 
stop wishing me so well, Miss Derwenter. I'm not worthy 
of it. If I were, I should be able to bear it better." 

The too ready tears started to Margaret's eyes. " What 
shall I wish for you, then ? " she asked. " I will wish any- 
thing you like." 

" Wish the impossible, please. That is the only thing 
that can do me the slightest good. Wish me the man I 
was six months ago ; wish me the love of the only person 
who matters. Come, don't be close, Miss Derwenter! 
Wish the never-will-be for me ! I might get well on the 
mere hope of it ! " 

" Do you mean — ? " 

" Oh, mean ! " he cried. I don't mean to be rude, for 
one thing." 

" No, no ! " exclaimed Margaret, her face full of ear- 
nestness ; " I only meant to say — " She had not an idea 
what she had meant to say. 

"The kindest and sweetest thing you could invent. 
Great heaven ! don't I know that ? And don't I loathe 
myself for letting you even think it for me ! " 

He glanced suddenly at her face, and saw the tears in 
her eyes. He bit his lips ; an inrush of emotion mastered 
him. The uncommon mood in which the expression of 
feelings habitually restrained had left him was defenceless 
before the impulse of love which sprang up in him at 
sight of the sweet tumult of compassion for him in her 



154 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

eyes. He was standing at her saddle-pommel. Her arm 
hung by her side. He caught her hand to his lips in a 
long, blind, reckless kiss. Margaret gave him a swift, 
scared look as he relinquished it. Then, gathering her 
reins hastily, she turned the pony back down the road 
they had come up. 

" Pride, ignorance, sufficiency, folly ! " she said to her- 
self with smarting eyes, thinking of her rejection of 
Beatrice's warning. Must she always be so grossly wise ? 
She said to herself that Ernfield was not to blame, and 
shrank from the thought of him with terror, in a breath. 
It was her position — her intolerable no position — that 
made such things possible. 

As Ernfield followed her, she gave him a fleeting 
glance in which he read a reproach that cut him to the 
heart. He felt like spurring his horse over the edge of the 
precipice along which they were riding. But he decided 
to see her' safely home first. There were always precipices 
if one needed them. 

He kept her in sight with difficulty. She pushed her 
horse down the steeps at a pace which made him fear for 
her. A single thought was in her mind — Deed. Her 
heart went out to him in a passionate appeal for shelter 
and defense. The silent loyalty which she had kept for 
him, in the midst of all resentment of his act, had leaped 
to flame at the touch of Ernfield's lips ; and she could not 
think how she could live until she could stand at his side 
again where he could protect her from the world and from 
herself. Pride and bitterness fell away from her like 
the properties of a dream. Her eyes were wet with 
joyous tears. 

Ernfield wondered at the radiant look of resolve upon 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 155 

her face as he helped her to alight at her own door. She 
did not care what he did for her now. 



IX. 

Deed was pitching his effects into his trunk with 
nervous haste. If he paused for a moment to gaze at the 
confused heap, the ache at his heart reasserted itself, and 
he turned from his work, and went to stare miserably out 
of the hotel window. In these moments he tasted de- 
spair. 

He had paid Philip. That was done with. He had 
made short work of his protestations ; he knew on which 
side to place him now. He had gone Jasper's way. Deed 
told himself that he ought to be glad. He might have 
gone on trusting him as he had trusted Jasper, until he 
had confided enough to his honour to make the trust-worth 
abusing ; and a sickening breach of faith, like Jasper's, 
must have followed in due course. It was better to know 
the worst now. As he remembered what the worst was, 
he turned from the window dizzily, and sank into a chair, 
groaning aloud. 

He no longer had a son. The misery of the words 
filled up the world's space. But a more hateful pain lay 
within the loss — that they had lost themselves to him. He 
could have borne that they should die — even if their 
deaths had trodden on each other's heels as their falsities 
had done. But that they should live as ingrates and 
traitors to his love was a pain beyond the worst that death 
can bring. 



156 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

What was it, he asked himself, as he sat crouched 
miserably in his chair, with his head in his hands, that 
made ingratitude so intolerable, so damnable, so unfor- 
givable a thing? Was it that it cut into the best of a 
man ? Was it because the loving acts on which gratitude 
follows proceed from the richest, the tenderest, the secret- 
est corners of a man's nature that the agony of an answer- 
ing baseness, where one has a right to look for an answer- 
ing love, is so unendurable ? Of course it was a pain to re- 
ceive a blow in the face, and doubly a pain where one 
must rather expect a kiss ; but did that explain all the 
degrading, the soul-nauseating, horror of ingratitude? 
The pang of it was part of the stock of familiar allusion ; 
it must have been felt since men first loved and served 
one another ; shredded echoes of quotation floated into his 
head and out again, as he sat writhing under the torture 

of it. 

For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, 

Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, 

Quite vanquished him : then burst his mighty heart ; . . . 

And Lear's cry — he had never felt its awful force 

before — 

. . . that she may feel 

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 

To have a thankless child ! 

Common ! Why it was in the school speakers ! Every 
one had felt the wound ! And yet none of all the mil- 
lions who had suffered from it could say what it was — 
what peculiar, stinging, maddening touch lay in it to 
make the hurt of it beyond all other hurts. Ah, well, 
what difference could it make to them or him ! They 
knew the pain, and he knew it. The pain was enough. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 157 

He got up, and went restlessly about his packing again. 
Where were the good hours of seven days ago ? he asked 
himself, as he folded his dress-coat. He smiled sadly for the 
thought, and for the idea of taking a dress-coat on such a 
journey. It was useless to take it, but it was equally fool- 
ish to leave it ; he did not expect to return immediately, 
and he did not wish to give it to the hotel people. He 
thought he should go on a long journey, to Florida, to 
Cannes, to Egypt, — anywhere away from memory, — when 
he had found the men at Burro Peak City who had once 
wanted to buy the " Lady Bountiful," and had made his 
sale. The hotel people might prove ungrateful, he said 
to himself with a sorry laugh. " Ungrateful ! " he re- 
peated, in the aimless need we feel to keep up a conversa- 
tion with ourselves when we are miserable. The word 
flooded his heart with the recurrent ache ; he dropped the 
coat listlessly into the tray, and returned to the window. 
Ah, where was the man of those good hours of a week 
ago? He remembered vaguely that he had once been 
happy, as souls in hell may recall their days of earth : it was 
an unreal memory > as if it had been another's happiness. 
Who was the man who had ridden up to a certain door in 
Maverick a week before, with life at his feet, and all the 
sweet airs of earth blowing for him? Not he. That man 
had two sons who loved him, and whom he loved. 

Deed looked sadly on the spectacle of the street, 
crowded with men to whom life still meant something — 
men who had not lost their sons, perhaps, or had never 
known what it was to have sons, and to love them as one's 
soul. Why did they go up and down ? It fatigued his 
sight, this restless motion of which he had once been part 
— before his quarrel with Margaret, before Jasper had 



158 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

turned traitor, before Philip had cut the last tie that 
bound him to life, and set him adrift among the un- 
friended men to whom nothing matters. What was it all 
about ? What was it for ? 

He remembered that they lived in a different world, — 
his world of a week ago, — and that they understood what 
it was all for, no doubt, as he would have understood then. 
They understood ; but his present feeling would be as in- 
comprehensible to them as theirs was to him. Would he 
have understood it himself a week ago ? All happiness 
and unhappiness suddenly seemed to him to be shut up to 
themselves in chambers desolately aloof from each other, 
and from every other state of feeling. One sensation 
must forever be as solitary, as incommunicable, as the 
other. The unbearable sense of loneliness which the 
thought gave him made him shut his eyes against the 
sight of the going and coming in the street. The best 
sympathy, he knew, would be powerless to guess deeper 
than the outer envelope of his feeling ; and these men, if 
they would imagine his misery ever so vaguely, must not 
merely be unhappy themselves, but must be enough like 
him to understand him ; and he did not understand 
himself. 

Could any of all the strange chances that brought men 
to a mining camp from the earth's dust-bins and coal- 
holes, leaving every colour of human experience behind 
them, have drawn here one man enough like himself to 
understand how, a week ago, in the crazy satisfaction of 
an impulse of passion, he could have forsaken a happiness 
filling and overflowing in the moment of his folly all his 
hopes ? Was there one who could do an incurable wrong 
in such besotted confidence in one hour, and know it for 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 159 

what it was in the next ? With others did the remorse 
follow instantly upon the fatuity ? With so much wisdom 
after the event, did others find none before ? 

But he knew very well that no one in his place could 
have done Margaret the unforgivable wrong he had done 
her. It was left for him to make a loving woman, guilty 
only of endeavouring to save him from himself, the vic- 
tim of an infernal suspicion ; and upon the head of it to 
abandon her on their wedding-day. It was an insensate 
cruelty; and now it was his punishment to long hope- 
lessly for a forgiveness which he should never insult her 
to ask. A moment later, thinking how Margaret would 
judge the expedient he had been driven to that morning 
in order to raise money to pay Philip, a sharp doubt of 
his innocence insinuated itself, and he would have been 
glad to undo it. But that was past praying for ; and on 
the whole, it was as safe and fair as it seemed, probably. 
The $25,000 which he had borrowed at his bank in the 
morning on the security of some Iron Silver stock — part 
of the Brackett estate of which he was one of two trustees 
— was a temporary accommodation from an estate which 
owed thrice that sum to his care, and one which could 
cost it nothing. If he could have sold his Burro Peak 
mine, the " Lady Bountiful," in Leadville, he need not 
have called on it; but they did not know the "Lady 
Bountiful " in Leadville, and the men at Burro Peak who 
did, and who had offered him $60,000 for it a year ago 
(when he had refused) were a four-days' journey from 
Leadville, beyond the telegraph and the railway, beyond 
even the stage-coach. As it was, he had simply borrowed 
$25,000 until he could lay his hands on his own money — 

a matter of ten days, as he reckoned it. He couldn't wait 
11 



160 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ten days to pay Philip. He had found it irksome enough 
to wait for the opening of banking hours on the morrow 
of their quarrel ; he had itched to have the money in his 
fingers when he had given him his bitter promise ; and 
he had risen the next morning with his pride engaged to 
its last crazy and obstinate fibre in the resolve to keep the 
letter of that promise. He had kept it. 

He turned to his packing once more, with a curse for 
Jasper on his lips. In the little space of a week he had 
lost all that made life worth while, and of all this devilish 
fatality of loss Jasper was the origin. The ruinous right- 
ing of himself which, in its endless ramifications, had now 
pursued him to the last covert of his happiness — whom 
else had he to thank for it but Jasper ? Through him he 
had been brought to the madness which separated him 
from Margaret ; through him he had just parted with 
Philip as a stranger ; through him, worst of all, he had 
laid himself open to the unbearable reproach from which 
he had just freed himself with Philip, at a cost of which 
he preferred not to think. He saw all that had happened 
since the moment he had opened Jasper's letter as one 
piece of wretchedness, wrong-doing, and shame, and of 
every inch of it he saw Jasper as the author. He longed, 
in the fury that seized at the thought, to lay his hand on 
his throat, and to crush out the life he had given him. 

But his helpless rage against Jasper and Philip ended 
always in a remorseful thought. In the bitterest pain he 
suffered through their falsity, it was a negative mitigation 
of his grief to know that he had not himself to blame. 
But as to Margaret, it was his shame and torment to know 
that his own act had lost her to him. In this blackest 
hour of his life he knew that but for himself she might 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 161 

have been by. The single happiness which might have 
remained to help him turn his eyes patiently towards the 
future had been done to death by his own folly. He 
cursed himself. 

She would never look at him again. He knew that. 
He would be ashamed if she did. He would not have 
ventured to lift his eyes to her face if they had met in 
the street ; yet he longed for her presence at this moment 
as never before. He would have gone half round the 
world for a touch of her hand; and he had cast away 
the right to take it as any stranger might. 

" Fool ! fool ! " he roared to the unanswering air as 
he paced the room. He flung his arms aloft in the last 
abasement of his misery. 

His arms relaxed. He sank into the chair. Tears 
smarted in his eyes. 

Margaret, when she stole into the room five minutes 
later, found him so. 



X. 

"Yes," said Beatrice to her husband, a week after 
this, — she repeated it because, after all, perhaps she was 
not quite sure of it, — "it was the very best thing she 
could have done." 

This thought about Margaret's impulsive flight to 
Deed, and her marriage, had been reached by a circuitous 
route ; but she clung to it now. When Margaret had 
come down-stairs with her bag packed, after her ride 
with Ernfield, and had asked to have her trunk sent after 
her to the station, Beatrice had not discredited herself by 



162 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

a question. She divined, in the moment of pause which 
she suffered to elapse before she spoke, just what had 
happened, and all the feeling that was making a tumult 
in Margaret's breast at the moment, and casting her into 
Deed's arms ; and after an awful moment of reflection, in 
which she reconciled herself to the odious surrender 
which Margaret was making, and taught herself to like 
it, and then to delight in it, — particularly to delight in it 
as the act of Margaret, — she fell upon her neck. She said 
it was the best, the wisest, the most womanly, uncharac- 
teristic, human, every-day thing that Margaret had ever 
done, and that she deserved a triple kiss of farewell and 
approval. 

She had her qualms when she had gone. Her jealousy 
for the integrity of the unassailable, the righteous, posi- 
tion which Margaret had maintained since the event — 
which would have crushed another woman — returned 
upon her with a rush; and it suddenly seemed wholly 
wrong — what she had done? 

It had all been a burning matter with Beatrice since 
it had happened. She had felt more than she could ever 
say about it. If she had said everything she thought, she 
would have said that a man who could do what Deed had 
done deserved forgiveness at no woman's hands. Of 
course any woman would forgive him if she loved him ; 
but that was another matter. If he was to be forgiven, 
however, surely he should come suing for pardon on his 
knees. In this light it became something perilously like 
a point of honour, involving the whole sex, that Margaret 
should not be the first to seek a reconciliation. 

Beatrice simply could not bear to think that, without 
any merit or motion on his part, he should win back a 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 163 

happiness which he had not deserved. But she saw that, 
after all, this did not count. If women went into the 
question of men's deserts, where would they bring up ? 
It was the wrong way of approaching the question alto- 
gether. The right way was one which she explained to 
her husband, who smiled at her over his lifted coffee- 
cup — they were at breakfast — when she made known to 
him the conclusion at which she had finally arrived about 
Margaret. 

" How is it the best thing she could have done ? " he 
demanded. " She didn't do it on your advice, Trix," he 
said, with a twinkling eye. 

" I don't care," returned Beatrice, valiantly. " She 
did right, if there was any right left to do in such a case. 
It was the womanly thing to do." 

" Yes," owned Vertner, " it was the weak thing." 
" To be sure," assented Beatrice, accepting this version 
of her meaning courageously; "and that's its strong 
point." Vertner laughed. "No; but I mean it," per- 
sisted his wife. "In the dreadful situations women are 
alwa3 T s getting into since they took to masterfulness and 
self-sufficiency, there's just one way out that's sure to be 
right; and that's the weak way." 

" When in doubt throw away all your trumps." 
" When in doubt be a woman. Of course she aban- 
doned her position. She threw away all her advantage. 
But her advantage was really too great — don't you see ? 
she had to get rid of it. It was a bother. I suppose 
there is such a thing as being more in the right than you 
know what to do with. It didn't make her happy, and it 
must always have kept him from making the advance. I 
see that now. I used to want him to grovel. But I 



164 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

don't see that it would have done her any real good. It 
would have been a poor victory at best ; and what she has 
done, if she has done it in the way I suppose she has, 
would be a triumph." 

" Oh, you needn't trouble yourself to mention that 
when a woman does do the magnanimous, a man is winc- 
ing for it somewhere. I believe you." 

" Hush, Ned ! You know she acted from the purest 
motives." 

"Nonsense, my dear! You wouldn't go and accuse 
any woman of pure motives, I hope — pure and simple mo- 
tives. Let us admit that she acted from the purest adul- 
terated motives possible. It's a handsome admission." 

Beatrice was silent. She was thinking of something 
else. " I don't know," she said, after a moment, doubt- 
fully, " whether I quite like the mere act of her return to 
Mr. Deed. But that was inevitable; and I've always 
thought that it's a mistake that we ought to leave to men 
to be deterred by the look of an act. Don't you know, 
Ned ? Nothing seems very right, let alone very heroic, 
when you are doing it. Taking the train, getting to the 
hotel, findiug the number of his room — I'm afraid she 
found it all hard because it must all have seemed so small. 
She was doing a fine thing ; and there ought to have been 
some very good music by a concealed orchestra, scenery 
by the best artists, and electric lights. Don't you think 
so ? But when they were in each other's arms, and for- 
giving each other everything, and agreeing to forget that 
they had ever tried to forget each other, or do without 
each other, aren't you sure that she saw that it was the 
right thing to do even if it was the weak thing, and the 
absurd thing, and the — " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 165 

" Crawfish thing ? " suggested Vertner. " I don't know. 
You wouldn't be up to any such game, Trix." 

" I shouldn't have got into the situation originally. 
But if I had—" 

"You would have done me up with a weakness to 
which Mrs. Deed's was hearty." 

" Well, it would have been a different kind. I should 
have tried to select something that you would under- 
stand." 

" Thanks. And do you suppose Deed understands ? " 

" I'm sure he does. No woman would do such a thing 
for a man who she was not sure would understand. He 
would understand,* and would be humbled into the dust 
by it." 

" And you picture her spending the years to come con- 
soling him for the humiliation her brilliant weakness has 
caused — dusting him off ? " 

" I picture them both as very happy," returned Beatrice, 
with dignity. Her husband laughed. 

When Vertner came home to their one o'clock dinner, 
she perceived by the look on his face that he had heard 
something which he did not mean to tell her. 

" What makes you like this business, Trix?" he asked 
her, abruptly, as if they had not discussed the question. 

" Don't you ? " she asked, with quick suspicion. Like 
a good wife, she kept a rational scorn for her husband's 
ideas about certain things — the sort of things which only 
women understood ; but she had a respect for his percep- 
tions about character. As Vertner said, he lived " by siz- 
ing people up," and couldn't afford to make mistakes — 
and, at the moment, she had a still greater respect for his 
news. 



166 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" I like my bread and butter better," said Vertner non- 
commitally, biting delicately at a mushroom. 

It was one of the peculiarities of the Vertner household 
that their table, in the face of every sort of obstacle, main- 
tained an almost Eastern decency and good cheer. As 
Vertner told Beatrice, they " would have fresh artichokes 
if they had to buy up all the canned goods in Maverick to 
find 'em." In a country where every one lived by grace of 
the tin can, the Vertners did not manage their good table 
without the use of an energy, ardour, and inventive skill 
which would have gone a long way in felling the forests 
of a hardier sort of pioneering. Vertner did not leave it 
all to his wife ; he had studied household providing since 
his marriage, as he studied a number of other unrelated 
and unexpected things. In most of the other things he, 
more or less remotely, " saw a dollar " ; but in this he saw 
an instinct for propriety, for excellence, for "having 
things right," as he called it, which did not follow him 
always into other departments. 

" Ned, do let us have something free from your 
wretched mighty dollar." There was the weariness in her 
tone which implies an old and hopeless subject between 
man and wife. " What can there be in Margaret's mar- 
riage to affect the price of corner lots ? " 

She would not have been the loyal wife to him she was 
if, in accepting him, she had not accepted, without pre- 
meditation, the larger half of his theories. But even when 
she talked unconsciously in the too alluring, too natural, 
slang, which was so native to the life he led, and either so 
shockingly or so admirably expressive of it (she was not 
always sure which), she was sorrowfully conscious of her 
reserves. She might easily have nagged him with them, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 167 

but not merely her good sense, but a feeling of obligation 
to his honesty in having told her as much of his way of 
life as a man can convey to the woman who has not yet 
married him, withheld her. She could not say that she 
had not been warned. Yet, in her young girl's ideals 
there had never been any arrangement made for trimming 
her life by the market for her husband's new scheme. 
There was always a new scheme in the Vertner household, 
and they had it for breakfast, dinner, and supper. 

" Corner lots are all right," said Vertner. " The 
trouble is deeper down. Deed has left me with a flooded 
mine on my hands. If he had stayed where he was, I 
could have talked him into that pumping machinery." 

" Then I'm glad he didn't. You have enough mines, 
Ned," said she. It was the kind of inapposite wisdom 
which does not torment a man less for being based upon 
a feeling to which he partly assents, and not at all on the 
facts which he knows contradict it. 

" Have I ? I sha'n't have enough mines, my dear, 
until one of them is a money-maker. I've got too many 
holes in the ground ; but I'm mighty short of mines. 
This one I'm working with Deed — or should be if I was — 
has a vein in sight that — " He went on to tell her the 
seductive story of the assay, and of the wealth at their 
feet, to which she had listened in the case of a dozen 
other mines. She knew how each of these other mines 
had turned out, and he knew ; but there is a tameless 
sublimity of faith known to the man who has once owned 
a mine, and to the man's family, which acknowledges no 
past, and is as gaily independent of experience as the 
clouds that forage the air for the other clouds in which 
they lose themselves. 



168 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

"But where has Mr. Deed gone?" asked Beatrice at 
the end of his recital, as enthusiastic now as her hus- 
band. 

" How should I know ? A man doesn't generally give 
away the itinerary of his wedding- journey from the steps 
of the county court-house. Besides, in this case there 
wasn't time. I don't see but they were married by a 
dynamo. Philip and I were both in the hotel office. He 
had just had his final row with his father. They had 
given each other that full material for the understanding 
of each other's character so valuable in family rows the 
night before ; and this was rather quiet — not actually, 
but by comparison. Deed paid Philip some money that 
he didn't want, that he hated and abhorred, and which he 
straightway took to the First National and deposited to 
his father's credit. Those being the facts, Deed naturally 
supposed Philip was hankering for it, that he was basely 
longing for it at any cost to him, and that he was suspect- 
ing him of having tried to do him out of it : a thoroughly 
good misunderstanding like that (without a fact in sight) 
is just the basis for a gorgeous family row. You know 
Deed's temper. It's like Barnum's rarities — the hottest, 
the most ungovernable, the most totally unreasonable tem- 
per ever seen in captivity. It's to his credit that he does 
keep it in captivity most of the time, so that you might 
think his disposition a good sort. But when it blazes — 
look out ! That's all. It was on the blaze this time ; and 
when you remember that Philip himself hasn't the most 
— well, not the most angelic — well, you can believe it was 
a rumpus. Philip refused the money, of course, and 
obliged his father to insult him to get him to take it. 
Then they parted forever ; and an hour afterwards, when 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 169 

Philip was just starting up-stairs for the reconciliation 
that follows such fool rows, he stood aside to let his father 
pass, with a lady on his arm. Deed didn't look at him. 
The porters put some luggage on a carriage in waiting, 
the hotel clerk threw an old shoe after them, and I went 
back and inquired at the desk, and found out that Philip 
had a new mother. They had been out to St. George's 
between the time when Philip came out of the hotel hot 
against his father and came to hunt me, and the time when 
Phil, like the sensible fellow he is, went back to make it 
all up." 

" Well, I'm glad they were married in church, anyway," 
said Beatrice, " and the haste wouldn't make any difference 
to Margaret. She wouldn't care any more what she was 
married in than — than a cassowary." 

" Yes," said Vertner, wickedly ; " that indifference of 
the cassowary to an appropriate wedding-dress, and that 
vile carelessness about orange blossoms, is just one of those 
facts of natural history that lend a charm to — " 

But his wife had finished her dinner, and she came 
over and shook him. 

He grew serious when she asked him for his news. 
"It's not my news, Trix," he said. "You mustn't ask 
me." He fell into one of the moods of sober thoughtful- 
ness in which his new schemes were usually imagined, and 
in which Beatrice was al ways t careful not to disturb him. 
It was not a scheme to-day, she saw, however. His face 
was almost sad, and his musing was apparently often 
balked by some thought at recollection of which he would 
make a wry face, and clench his fist. 

Yertner's trouble was the practical -disappearance of 
Deed — or, rather, certain circumstances accompanying his 



170 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

disappearance known only to Philip and himself. In the 
midst of his wretchedness about this miserable business 
(it tormented him more than anything that had ever hap- 
pened to himself, not only because if he had raised the 
money in time it wouldn't have happened, but because he 
really liked Deed, to whom he owed his present position 
in Colorado) only one thing consoled him : that they had 
not yet got hold of it in the town, and so could not be 
discussing it. What Vertner feared was that it would get 
into the papers. It had not represented itself as a dis- 
appearance to the town, thus far. It merely seemed to 
the gossip of Maverick that Deed was taking an unusually 
long wedding- journey. 

There were, besides, other things still to talk of con- 
nected with Deed, and especially other things connected 
with Margaret and her marriage, from which it is doubt- 
ful if the town chatter would really have liked to be called 
while so much remained unsaid. Margaret's action, as 
being the most sensational occurrence in what began to 
be known as " this Deed business," — overtopping even 
Deed's desertion of her on their wedding-day, — needed 
most of the discussion, and it had held the attention of 
the ladies steadily since her sudden departure for Lead- 
ville, and the announcement of the marriage in the Lead- 
ville papers of the following day. In that matter they 
felt that they had been trifled with. If Miss Derwenter 
had the high strain of forgiveness somewhere about her 
enabling her to pardon a man who had publicly deserted 
her on her wedding-day, why, in the name of nameless 
things, hadn't she found it out earlier ? Was it for this 
that she had flaunted her preference for Dr. Ernfield in 
the face of the town ? And what, pray, did she mean by 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 171 

her actions with that gentleman ? If she had really cared 
for Deed all along, her encouragement of Ernfield was 
simply shameless. The probability was that she had set 
herself to captivate Ernfield in the hope of breaking her 
fall ; and that when she found Ernfield obdurate she had 
turned to her first lover. 

At all events, when the ladies had been put to the 
trouble of arriving — after a week's fluttering among other 
opinions — at the belief that the affair between her and 
Deed was to be regarded as definitively " off," the neces- 
sity of revising this belief was irksome. The sense of 
the hardship of the situation of public opinion was liber- 
ally voiced wherever women met, and occasionally where 
men met. The ladies usually began with the admission 
that, so far as Margaret's " carrying-on " with Dr. Ernfield 
went, — it was by this phrase that they referred to the re- 
lation which Margaret had imagined so innocent ; it was 
merciful that she was not in Maverick at this time to hear 
what was said of it, — she could not be blamed. What the 
ladies objected to was her playing fast and loose, and off 
and on, as they said. " She didn't seem to know which 
she wanted, so far as I can see," said Mrs. McDermott, 
whose husband dealt in hats on Mesa street. 

" She got to know at the last," suggested one of the 
ladies, grimly, as Dr. Ernfield, on horseback, passed the 
church in which the ladies were gathered. 

" Yes," laughed Mrs. McDermott ; " all of a sudden, 
as you might say. No doubt Dr. Ernfield gave her 
cause." 

" Well," exclaimed Mrs. B. Erank Butler, " I'm sure 
you can't say the poor thing was to blame for turning 
'most any way for refuge just at first, when Mr. Deed 



172 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

deserted her on her wedding-day — going off as casual as 
you please. And I'm not so sure, either, that I blame her 
for turning the other way for refuge, just at the last. 
There wasn't really anything left for her but that, if she 
wanted to marry at all ; and as to her flirting with Dr. 
Ernfield, — if you call it that, — I don't know what I would 
call it m'self — who can say anything against a woman 
that ain't past marriageable age, for allowing the atten- 
tions of a pleasant and agreeable young man that any one 
can see is dead in love with her ? " 

She lifted her coarsely pretty little head out of the 
collar of her sealskin sack at this, bridling ; and it was 
evident that Mrs. Butler would not have been guilty of a 
wasteful discretion in such a case. 



XL 

" See here," said Vertner to Philip, when he met him 
in Mesa street in the afternoon, after his talk with Bea- 
trice (Philip had come down with him from Leadville on 
the day that the evidence of Deed's marriage had been 
offered them), " I've been thinking this thing out." 

" You haven't thought it out in any shape that's going 
to wipe out my asininity, Vertner," returned Philip. 
" I'm at the bottom of this thing, I tell you. You can't 
get me out from under it. I maddened my father, and if 
I had had a grain of sense — or had had the sense to use 
the sixteenth part of a grain that I sometimes have when 
there's nothing to use it on — I should have seen that I 
must madden him. Taking Jasper's part at that ! Well, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 173 

the thing wasn't square. I suppose I had to protest. 
But think of it's being Jasper ! As if I didn't owe him 
enough ! " 

" Now you're shouting," assented Vertner, cordially. 
" With a fellow like Jasper in sight, it's rank extravagance 
to waste your curses on yourself. And I wouldn't go 
messing with this question of responsibility, either. / 
don't believe we were meant to settle that," he asserted, 
with his emphatic nod. Vertner had a turn for philoso- 
phy in his odd hours, and a sense of his responsibility to 
religion, to which, when his wife asked him, he gave 
proper financial expression. He secretly regarded the 
clergy as a kind of lame ducks whom it was the duty 
of men blessed with the capacity for turning a penny to 
help along. It was only vaguely conceivable, under his 
theory, that they would be in the business if they had 
known how to rustle for themselves. " The moment you 
get to portioning out blame, and saying where this 
wouldn't have happened if so and so, and how that would 
have been all right if What's-his-name," he went on, " you 
wind yourself into one of those snarls where the more 
you wind the more you snarl. The simplest way is the 
woman's way : scrape all the mud in the affair into one 
ball, and fling it at the person concerned in the business 
that you like least. And the worst possible way is to be a 
pig about the sackcloth, and snatch it all for your own wear. 
Better turn over most of the sackcloth in this little matter 
to Jasper, I guess. He deserves it, and it won't trouble 
him. He'll keep it on the shelf in the original package. 
There's something about that brother of yours, you know, 
Deed, that simply takes your admiration by the collar. 
You can't resist his talent ; and it would be a shame to try." 



174 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Oh, I don't try," said Philip, with a lack-lustre face. 

He drew Vertner into a doorway out of the confusion 
of the street, crowded at this hour with the ranchmen and 
miners who had come into town for the day for supplies, 
for their mail, or for mining or cattle dickers, or for mere 
liquid sociability, and had not yet set out on their return. 
Their freighted burros and saddled ponies pawed the 
roadway in a long range on each side the street. Some- 
times one of the ponies would lift a hoof to the board 
sidewalk, which ran at the level of his knees above the 
road, and hammer about on the boards until a man would 
come from a neighbouring saloon and order him to " Whoa 
there, you — ! " 

" Well, that's right," said Vertner, heartily, in response 
to Philip's negative, as they sheltered themselves in the 
doorway. " If you are a miserable man, and your father 
an utterly wretched one ; if he has seen Jasper play him 
the lowest trick ingratitude could invent ; if he has seen 
you apparently do the same, and has come within that 
of losing a wife, and now has had to make his wedding- 
journey a flight from justice — " 

" Oh, shut up, Vertner ! " 

" — An opportunity for parley with the law, then. I 
don't care what you call it (it's what he thinks it that 
makes the difference, isn't it ?) — if, I say, one of the first 
families in Lone Creek County has come to this in a week, 
it's a glorious satisfaction to know that the hand that pulled 
the strings belongs to a Jim-dandy of a talent. There's 
something nothing less than bang-up about — Oh, I say, 
Phil ! " he exclaimed remorsefully, as his companion 
turned away. He clapped his hand upon his shoulder. 
" I don't mean that guff. I thought — " He caught his 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 175 

eye with a look like pleading in his own. " I thought 
the other view might comfort you a bit. The tragic we 
have always with us — expressive of the feelings, but wear- 
ing, you know." 

He blundered on, until Philip stopped him with : 
" Oh, I know, Vertner. Don't think I don't understand 
that you've been my best friend in all this, and are stick- 
ing by me like the brick you are. Whatever rot I may 
talk, don't forget that. And when we find my father — " 

" Which will be the day after to-morrow," interrupted 
Vertner, cheerfully. 

" What ? Have you heard ? " 

Vertner rolled his lips over the cigar in his mouth. 
" Well, there is a sort of clue. But I suppose I have to 
own that I'm cribbing the date from the general stock of 
hopefulness. We'll find him, though, wherever he is 
gone." 

"Find him? Well, if I thought we shouldn't!—" 
Philip set his teeth in a manner peculiar to him, which 
Vertner had learned to respect. When it had been a 
question in Chile of throwing a bridge across a mountain 
gorge, and there had been a call for a volunteer to take 
the first line across, he remembered that Philip had said 
quietly, " I'll do it," with that tightening of the muscles 
of the jaw. 

" I suppose he is suffering," said Vertner, meditatively. 
" And it's so utterly useless." 

" Suffering ! A man who never stained his name with 
so much as a shadow of wrong, a man whom all the State 
trusts ! Think what he will be supposing that he has 
done ! When I think of that, and think that I am re- 
sponsible for the thing ! — " 
12 



176 BENEFITS FOUGOT. 

" Oh, confound your responsibility ! " exclaimed Vert- 
ner. " Didn't I say I'd get that money for you? Didn't 
I lead you to rely on me for it ? " 

" Stuff ! " 

"And did I get it?" 

"Yes." 

" Did I get it in time to do any good ? " 

u No ; but—" 

" Well, then! " said Vertner, conclusively. 

This money, which had come too late, was one of the 
collateral misfortunes for which Philip blamed himself 
most severely in the trouble with his father. He knew 
that Vertner, in the failure of all other chances, had hu- 
miliated himself before a man who he had been sure from 
the beginning would lend him the amount if he would 
consent to ask him ; and so had obtained it at a price he 
would not have paid willingly for any personal good. 
The act, useless as it proved in the event, bound him to 
Vertner, Philip felt, by a peculiar tie. He had always 
known him for a good fellow ; he had not supposed him 
quite so good a fellow as all that. He himself knew what 
it was to borrow money where it was lent grudgingly. 
Some people were great duffers about money, he thought. 

Of course neither Philip nor Vertner was in a position 
to know of the intention with which Deed had pledged 
the stock at the bank in Leadville ; but they had been 
rightly sure (at first) that he must have gone away with 
the expectation of finding money elsewhere, and of re- 
turning to redeem the securities before a question could 
arise. They had guessed so much as this; but as the 
weeks passed, and he did not return, they were forced to 
believe that other resources (if he had really gone to seek 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 177 

them) had failed him, and that, recognizing that he 
could not come back, he had at least not taken pains to 
make his whereabouts known. 

" I shouldn't care that we couldn't come at him," said 
Philip, " if we could only let him know." 

" Yes ; after the pains you took to explain to that re- 
ceiving teller that your father had asked you to step 
around and redeem that stock for him, and the pretty way 
you manoeuvred the return of the actual stock itself to 
Deed's tin box in the bank, where the cotrustee can find 
it any day he has an unnatural longing for the sight, and 
after the way you deposited the other $25,000 to your 
father's private account, it's a pity to have him glooming 
around in some Canadian watering-place, taking himself 
for an absconding trustee." 

" See here, Vertner — " began Philip, hotly. 

" Oh, well," cried Vertner, " that isn't the only pity. 
What gives me a pain is to have to think that we went 
and wasted a good joke on that bank teller." 

" What joke ? " asked Philip, impatiently. 

" The joke of paying back into his old bank the same 
money your father had just borrowed from it." He 
quizzed Philip's serious face with his audacious smile. 



XII. 

It had been Vertner's thought — mixed, like many of 
his thoughts, of kindly intention and an eye to business — 
to ask Philip and Cutter to take charge of the " Snow 
Find." As Vertner said, it would " bear a little more find- 
ing, and they were the men to do it." Beatrice had ex- 



178 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

pressed herself freely about the double meaning which 
this last clause wore in her husband's inind, without shak- 
ing him from his purpose. He said it was really one of 
the best mines in the State; that it would be another 
" Iron Silver " if you gave it time — and money. The 
money he hoped Cutter would get from his father after a 
while. Cutter's father was not always rich, he knew ; but 
he often was. It was the intermittent stockbroker way. 
And Cutter, as he worked the mine for himself, would 
soon have the best of all possible evidence of its magnifi- 
cent promise. Vertner had visions of fetching the father 
out in a special car to see the " Snow Find" for himself, 
if it came to that. The thing was a bonanza. Vertner 
even began, in the rosy dreams which he allowed to curl 
up out of the accomplished fact of the installation of the 
two young men in charge of the mine, to see the making 
of a man of business in Cutter. Even Cutter laughed at 
this, and Philip roared ; but Yertner said he knew what 
he was about, which was strictly true ; and he proved 
himself in earnest about working the mine by advancing 
Philip a month's salary when he asked for it. The cred- 
itors at Pinon, whom Philip had been unable to silence, as 
he had hoped, with his father's aid, were growing impu- 
dent about the debts they had urged him to contract with 
servility ; and money was a necessity. He sent all that he 
could spare out of the salary to his creditors, after lending 
Sandy Dikes $5, losing $25 on a horse-race at Pueblo for 
which Cutter had given him a tip, and paying his share 
in a little monthly pension which he had got half a dozen 
others at Pinon to join him in arranging for Doulton. 
(Doulton's claim had caved in on him, and there was to 
be an amputation; they were paying the pension until 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 179 

Mrs. Doulton could get along on the profits of the saloon 
she had opened since the accident.) There was also a 
book for which he had heard Miss Maurice express a wish ; 
and when the bill for it came from Denver, it was higher 
than he had expected. He told Vertner after the first 
week that he would have to raise his salary ; and Vertner, 
who was generous and understood, and who was shrewd 
and remembered Cutter, yielded readily enough. 

He offered to raise Cutter's salary also, but Cutter said 
he should want to get out of the country just as badly if 
he had 125 more a month as he should without it; he 
added that he wasn't worth what he was getting, which 
he did not believe. He thought himself a good sort of 
mining engineer now ; and if his present wisdom on the 
subject of mining were matched against the ignorance he 
had brought to Colorado in a Pullman, there was some- 
thing in this estimate of himself. 

The " Snow Find " was the mine which Deed had left 
on Vertner's hands, full of water ; and until he could find 
the money to purchase machinery to pump the water out, 
he had determined to bend his energies — or rather to let 
Philip and Cutter bend their energies — to working a new 
lead, away from the water. The new lead was actually a 
productive one when Philip and Cutter began upon it ; 
and they were now taking out ore which paid fairly. 

When Beatrice questioned his motives now, Vertner 
unscrupulously silenced her with the magnanimous half 
of them. She could not deny, when it was put to her 
with Vertner's cogency of statement, that Philip had been 
miserable, restless, and tormented ; running off on every 
fresh cine to the end of the State (at ten cents a mile — a 
subject for legislation, if there was one, Vertner said), 



180 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

and coming back weary, disheartened, and discouraged. 
She admitted that an occupation which would give him 
an interest, and prevent him from brooding upon this 
business of his father's disappearance, was a praiseworthy 
idea ; and she praised Vertner for it, when she was not 
condemning him for including Cutter in the matter. 

" And do you suppose Philip would have gone up there 
into the hills without him?" Vertner asked securely. 
" A cabin in the hills, strictly by yourself, would cure any 
one of the blues. You ought to prescribe for all the mis- 
ery, Trix. Confining yourself to Philip is a limitation of 
talent." 

" I suppose he does feel that he is doing the best thing 
he could do, until his father is found, in working at this 
mine for him," she admitted irrelevantly, in the need of 
admitting something. "And if it should happen that 
it turns out as rich as you expect, Ned, why, what a 
splendid thing it will be for him to be able to turn it over 
to his father on his return, and say — " 

" I don't think he'll have to say much. Deed will be 
glad enough of anything he can raise in the shape of 
money, by the time he gets back, unless I'm a particularly 
bad guesser." 

" Yes ; but he wouldn't take it from Philip — not after 
what has passed between them ; not after his casting him 
off like that, and vowing that he would never see him 
again. You said that yourself, Ned." 

" Yes," assented Vertner, yawning — it was the end of 
the evening, and he had finished his Denver newspaper, 
and was stretched cozily in his deep chair before the fire, 
— " I said that he said it. But Deed's vows aren't always 
' good until used,' you know. The very passion he ex- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 181 

pends in making them seems to have a tendency to wear 
them out early." 

" I don't think this one will wear out. What he 
thought Philip had done was too bad. It had the touch 
of ingratitude about it that no one can forgive in any 
wrong. I know I couldn't. And I think Philip is doing 
just the right thing. It will show his father — " 

" That he underrated that mine ? " quizzed Vertner, 
with a laugh, as he rose lazily in preparation for bed. " It 
will, it will, my dear ! That is, it will if Cutter senior is 
the man I take him for." 

" Ned ! " 

Vertner smiled the smile of satisfied sophistication at 
her through his half-closed eyes, as he stretched his arms 
in a final yawn. " Come," he said, " are you ever going 
to bed?" 

Philip was glad of the work Vertner offered him at 
the " Snow Find " because he needed money, — he always 
needed money, and the search for his father was an added 
channel of expenditure now, and a further hindrance to 
the payment of his debts at Pinon, — but he liked, 
besides, to feel that his work was doing something more 
for him than earning the salary Vertner was giving him. 
It was pleasant to feel that each bucketful of ore that 
he saw lifted out of the " Snow Find " was of direct 
advantage to his father. Until he could find him, the 
next best thing was to be doing something for him. 
Meanwhile he spent a large part of his salary in following 
up clues of Deed. They all turned out alike; after an' 
absence of a day or two he would return with downcast 
face, and resume work at the mine silently ; and Cutter 



182 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

could not find heart to question him. Even Vertner's 
light spirit would sometimes droop before their repeated 
failures ; though he always waked the following morning 
with a fresh idea, which Philip followed out or pooh- 
poohed, as it happened, but which no longer excited any 
buoyancy in him. It was maddening to think that his 
father was making himself unhappy somewhere for the 
absurdly simple reason that they did not know his ad- 
dress. 

The habit of seeing a great deal of Dorothy, and think- 
ing much of her when he was not with her, went along 
curiously with his unhappiness about his father. He 
could not talk to her of his father's disappearance, of 
course, but to see her was to forget his trouble, and he 
and Cutter both found time from their duties at the 
" Snow Find," though they could not go together, to ride 
with her. It sometimes happened that Philip and 
Dorothy rode alone ; but it usually fell out that Dick 
Messiter and Beatrice were of the party. Beatrice was 
very fond of riding, and Vertner had been buying her a 
horse lately with the profits of a little " flier " in a Lead- 
ville mining stock. 

Dorothy and Beatrice became fast friends in the in- 
timacy of these rides ; and Philip, though he imagined, 
alternately, furtherances and failures in Dorothy's kind- 
ness for him day by day, was really in the unvarying enjoy- 
ment of the type of good will a woman sometimes gives 
to a man whom she trusts. All their relation took its 
colour from those days in the cave, during which they had 
learned to know each other ; and this should have satisfied 
Philip for the moment. Perhaps it might have ; but he 
was obliged to remember that Messiter had shared those 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 183 

days as well, and that, with him, they had succeeded many 
earlier days the quality of which it was easy to imagine, 
It seemed impossible that there had been a time, before 
the snow had made them acquainted, when he had not 
known Dorothy, whose existence now was of the fibre of 
his own life. But such a time had been, and Messiter 
had plainly been master of its opportunities. He saw 
him too clearly for the good fellow he was to believe any- 
thing else ; indeed he liked him too well to believe any- 
thing else. 

Messiter, who still remained, simulating an echo of 
his early usefulness in settling the Maurices' house by 
inventing things to do for Dorothy, would have smiled 
sadly at this account of his favour with her. He would 
have said that for those who liked the unafraid, untrou- 
bled liking she showed him, it would probably be the sort 
of thing they liked. Some persons might enjoy the privi- 
lege of gazing into those gay, candid, tender, thoughtful 
eyes, — the eyes which were all these by turns to him, but, 
in his presence, never shy, nor downcast, nor in any kind 
of happy difficulties. But, for his part, he must have 
professed that the absence of all hesitations, all embarrass- 
ments, had its gloomy side. It was the kind of relation, 
he knew, which young men and young women were always 
pretending to themselves and to each other was their ideal 
of all that was blessed and comfortable. Had he not 
gammoned young girls with just such talk on the rocks 
at Mount Desert, at nineteen ? But he found nothing in 
the situation, as it presented itself, either blessed or com- 
fortable, though he stayed on. 

In spite of these lover's doubts, it would be a mistake 
to suppose that this was not a happy time for all of them. 



184 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

It was clouded for Philip by the continued fruitlessness 
of all efforts to find his father, as well as by the fluctua- 
tions of Dorothy's feeling towards him, which he was 
partly conscious of spinning out of his fancy, but con- 
stantly ready to credit afresh. Yet he was happy enough 
to fear a change — to look forward to Jasper's return with 
a fierce repression of his imagination. How would he and 
Dorothy meet ? What was their present relation ? "Where 
would they take up the thread? Was there a tolerable 
relation towards Dorothy for him if Jasper still existed 
for her ? These were the questions which he refused to 
ask himself. They were hints at the threshold of a whole 
torturing region of speculation, which to enter was to 
invite useless misery and the need for an immediate de- 
cision. Philip hated unpleasant thoughts, and detested 
immediate decisions ; if the banks a mile ahead concealed 
the enemy, why, there was still the mile. It might never 
be' completed, for one thing. If it were, one would find 
something to do when the time came. It was partly a 
reasonable confidence in himself, but chiefly a constitu- 
tional unwillingness to face disagreeable facts, which 
caused him meanwhile to lounge at the stem of the 
boat, finding the river water smooth and lulling under 
his hand. 

Messiter's sunny temper not being for clouds of any 
kind, he found what happiness he could in the immediate 
and agreeable fact that he was permitted to be constantly 
by Dorothy's side; while Beatrice, having settled Mar- 
garet's trouble to her satisfaction, had crossed her off her 
list, so to say, and, for the moment, concerned herself 
only intermittently about her (of course she knew nothing 
of her husband's concern), awaiting calmly her return to 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 185 

Maverick, flushed with her bridal happiness, and filled 
with new ideas about things. She fancied her greatly 
changed ; it would only show how marriage was the one 
thing for all women — even for those who did not seem at 
all to have been intended for its blessings. She fancied 
Margaret's severity, her primness, her "niceness" about 
certain matters, as smoothed and softened into the real 
niceness against which not even Ned could say anything. 

Dorothy had begun to plan for the future of her father 
and herself in Maverick. The people of the church had 
been charmed by his first sermon, and, as a matter of fact, 
it was a capital sermon. Their liking for it suggested to 
a number of minds at once that Maurice should be called 
to the vacant pulpit of St. John's in the Wilderness. As 
Beatrice said, it was a long time since they had had a 
regular service, but the lapse had not been due to the 
unwillingness of the congregation to support a clergyman. 
It was rather that there were varying ideals in the con- 
gregation. But Maurice fitted, in a degree, into all these 
expectations and wishes. He was a widower, he was not 
young, his graceful, good-humoured, flattering manner 
commended him to every one, and especially to those 
who sought a successful parish visitor. He was a High 
Churchman, holding with dignity to his ritual, but careful 
to avoid grounds of offence, and he preached undeniably 
good sermons. He was, besides, a trained and enthusiastic 
musician : on his first trial-Sunday the lady who played 
the organ fell ill at the last moment, and until a substi- 
tute discovered herself, after the second lesson, he himself 
accompanied the choir he had rehearsed during the week. 

It had ended, after some negotiation, in his being 
summoned. Maurice had told them frankly that he 



186 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

could not refer them to his last parish, giving them his 
own version of the occurrence which had caused him to 
leave Laughing Valley City; but when the vestry had 
heard favourably about him from the Dakota parish to 
which he referred them, and had definitely offered him 
the post, he told them, with some inward trembling, — for 
his resources were of the slightest, and if this opportunity 
should fail him he did not know where he should turn, — 
that if he was to remain with them they must grant him 
a higher salary. The vestry was reluctant ; he firm. It 
ended in their advancing the salary $100. It was more 
than they had ever paid before, they said; but perhaps 
they had never had so good a clergyman. Maurice smiled, 
and did not attempt to deny it. He did not believe there 
were many men of his sort to be had for $800 a year. 

He was now making ready to preach certain sermons 
selected by Dorothy from a considerable collection sent 
over the mountains on a burro by the ladies at Laughing 
Valley City, and was occupied in going about making the 
acquaintance of his new flock. 

His portly yet shapely and well-carried figure, his 
round, rubicund, smiling, only half-clerical face, his for- 
tunate voice, his admirable manner, soon began to be fa- 
miliar in Maverick. It pleased Dorothy to see how pop- 
ular her father had already become. She looked for- 
ward with pleasure to remaining a long time in Maverick. 
Perhaps he would set about raising funds to build a more 
permanent church. She remembered that the parish in 
which her father had remained longest was one in which 
he had built a new church. But there seemed no elements 
of discord here, none of the foolish, tiresome people who 
had made trouble in other parishes. Perhaps they should 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 187 

remain forever. Perhaps — it was a new country, a fairly- 
large town, there was an opportunity — perhaps he might 
one day be bishop of the diocese. 

Dorothy's plans were made with a pencil and a little 
memorandum-pad, from which she tore a number of sheets 
without finding a comfortable relation between her father's 
salary (after adding their trifling income to it) and the 
prices prevailing in Maverick for rent, food, and clothing. 
She avoided troubling her father about practical questions 
when she could ; but before they left the hotel, where they 
had been staying since their arrival, she felt that she must 
set the result of her calculations before him. When she 
attacked him on the subject at breakfast one morning, he 
smiled cheerfully. 

" Oh, we shall get along, I think. We shall get along." 
He rubbed his large, carefully kept hands together, after 
spreading his napkin over his ample form. " Have you 
included your mother's legacy in your calculations, Dor- 
othy ? " 

" Oh, yes. But with your salary it only makes a little 
over a thousand dollars. I'm afraid we ought not to have 
taken so expensive a house." 

His smile revealed the even glitter of perfect teeth be- 
neath a mustache which had been criticised as jaunty for 
a clergyman. " Why, my dear, we couldn't live in an un- 
plastered house, could we?" 

His smile and tone made it seem preposterous, but 
Dorothy said doubtfully : " I don't know. Perhaps when 
we found that we could get nothing plastered under 
$400, we ought to have felt that we must take one of the 
others." 

" Oh, no. Why, even at Laughing Valley we had a 



188 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

plastered house. Surely it doesn't seem an unreasonable 
ambition — a plastered bouse. And even if it were, depend 
upon it, the clergy get what they insist on. A man's 
needs are measured by the account he gives of them ; and 
in turn he is measured by his needs. If a clergyman 
shows himself content with a hovel, he not only won't get 
a decent dwelling, but when it comes to a question of some 
other need, he will be thought as capable of doing without 
whatever it may be that .he wants as he showed himself of 
doing without the house. I have "always found that I got 
wbat I wanted by taking the proper stand. I have found 
that people of a certain class respect the inability of a gen- 
tleman to do without things which they have never felt 
the need of." 

" But, father — " protested Dorothy, and paused. She 
had been about to ask if the price of having all that one 
wanted might not be that some one else should have less 
than he wanted — less than his own, perhaps. She was 
glad not to have said it. An observation which seems 
true in the largest bearing may be quite false to the 
little fact which suggests it, and which one is tempted 
to try by it. Her father was right, of course. He was 
always right. 

Philip and Cutter, in their cabin at the " Snow Find," 
often discussed Maurice. They agreed that it was a pity 
that Dorothy should have such a man for a father, or that 
he should happen to have such a daughter; but they 
avoided the discussion of Dorothy herself by tacit agree- 
ment. As Philip drew on his town-going boots for the 
fifth time during a single week, however, and began to 
rummage in his chest for a white shirt, Cutter made no 
further effort to contain himself. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 189 

" You are not going in for a boiled shirt ! " he ex- 
claimed, as Philip exchanged the loose flannel of the West 
for the Eastern affectation. Cutter — in pursuit of his 
loyalty to the civilization which had produced him — had 
never disused it, though the washerwoman at Pinon had 
forced him to go to a Chinaman by returning the first 
white shirts he sent her, contemptuously, rough-dried. 
" Oh, I say, this is too much ! Do you know, I've had an 
idea once or twice lately, Deed, that you are rather hard 
hit. Tremendously nice girl ! " he murmured to the cig- 
arette he was lighting. 

" Oh, yes ; she's nice enough, if that's all," owned 
Philip, rummaging in his army chest for some collars, 
which he fished out at last, limp and yellow from their 
confinement of a year. "Do you suppose there are any 
memories in New York long enough to recall the time 
when this was the pre-eminently pre-eminent shape in 
collars ? " he asked, holding up a bundle of them. 

" Stocks may have come in again, for all I know," 
answered Cutter. " Ask somebody more in the way of 
that sort of information, Crusoe, my boy, than Man Fri- 
day. But, I say, Deed, she is nice." 

" I think I remember agreeing with you in that ob- 
servation," said Philip. " But I'll sign a treaty with you 
to regard her as nice, if that doesn't satisfy you. I'll give 
bonds, I'll mortgage myself as security for her niceness, if 
you like. Come ! " The eagerness of his manner was a 
trifle out of key with this sort of easiness ; but Cutter for- 
bore his gibes. 

" I say, I'm awfully glad for you, old man." He had 
got himself on his feet, and wrung Philip's hand. 

" Are you ? What a romantic dog you are, Cutter ! 



190 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

It's uncommonly good of you." He turned to the recon- 
sideration of the collars. " I wish I saw any cause to be 
glad." 

" Don't you ? Then it's because you are infernally un- 
grateful. I'm bound to say that I do." 

" Yes," said Philip, with a weary smile ; " it is you, I 
believe, who look for big things from the ' Little Cipher.' 
You've got such a lot of faith, Cutter. It makes a cheer- 
ful companion of you. But you are hideously unreliable, 
you know. You'll be wanting to convince me that it is 
the honourable obligation of a beggar to go and propose 
marriage to somebody or other, next. Jasper has fur- 
nished me with just the sort of situation for you to try 
your abominable cheerfulness on. Turn it on, Cutter. 
Eub up your lamp, and get to work. I'm ready for any 
lie, if there's hope in it." 

" Pshaw ! There are paying properties in the world 
besides the ranch your brother has swindled you out of 
your share in. You forget the ' Pay Ore.' " 

" Oh, no, I don't — not when I'm in high spirits, and 
don't need what hope there is in it. But a man can't live 
on a hope like that, Cutter; and if he could, a woman 
couldn't, and no man could ask her to. And if he could 
ask her, he couldn't ask her father to let her." Cutter 
smiled at this reference to Maurice, who was a kind of 
joke between them ; and Philip smiled with him ruefully. 
The idea of Maurice allowing his daughter to marry any 
one but a rich man struck them both as humorous ; yet 
Cutter had to say, to console Philip, rather than because 
he believed it : 

" I don't know. There's some good in the old fraud, 
after all." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 191 

" Oh, don't go turning your cheerfulness on Maurice ! 
You haven't got the candle-power." 

" You might let me illuminate a little, and try," 
laughed Cutter. " But it is a sombre subject, that's a 
fact. You'll have to elope." 

" Shut up, Cutter ! " 

" Well, then, you'll have to wait for his consent. Put 
it either way. I'm only trying to please you ; and a dash 
of grey in the groom's hair isn't so bad, if you come to 
that." 

" Oh, drop it ! Your despair is worse than your cheer- 
fulness." 

" Well, it does seem to fit the facts of the case a little 
closer." 

" Oh, you're right. You're right. It does, and I 
know it when I'm not with her ; but when I am — D — 
it, man, I love her ! I can't lose her ! " 

" Now you're talking sense." 

" Am I ? It strikes me as a good deal more like the 
other thing. No ; I always come around to a clear sight 
of the situation — Jasper has fixed me out. It's as if he 
knew I must meet and care for the girl he once — Bah ! " 
Philip turned on his heel. 

" See here, have you given up your faith in the ' Pay 
Ore'?" 

" No," growled Philip ; " and I haven't given up my 
faith in the coming Brotherhood of Man ; but I wouldn't 
ask a girl to go to housekeeping on it." 

This was no reason why they should not thresh out to- 
gether again, for the hundredth time, the actual grounds 
for faith in the future of the " Pay Ore." They said to- 
gether again, and managed to say it without smiling, that 
13 



192 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

the ore-bearing vein was there ; that they were taking out 
good mineral all around the " Pay Ore " on the Hill ; that 
it was a question of finding out which way the vein dipped, 
and a question of the capital and patience necessary to 
reach it ; and they agreed that Eyan had the capital and 
the patience. Philip ridiculed Cutter's faith, as he always 
did when they spoke of this subject together ; but it was 
a way of playing his own hope, and they both knew it. 
Philip hoped rather easily, and most easily as a refuge 
from despair. He liked to be comfortable, and despair 
was uncomfortable. If he sometimes chose skepticism for 
an outward seeming, it was by way of hedging: one's 
hopes did not always come off, and a sophisticated doubt 
looked better on the record afterwards. 

" You'll live to see Eyan with his pick in that vein, 
yet," Cutter concluded. He had got to the end of his 
milling engineer's argument, and was indulging his gift 
of amiable prophecy. 

" Shall I ? " retorted Philip. " It will be a pretty 
tableau. But I don't know why we trouble ourselves 
about it, unless it is to avoid the point." 

" What is the point ? " He looked steadily at Philip, 
who smiled without amusement. " Oh ! " he exclaimed 
with intelligence. " Well, yes — " Cutter smiled. " But 
don't you think— ? " 

" No, sir ; I don't." 

Cutter bent forward. " Why, what's the trouble ? " 

" Usual trouble. Another fellow." 

" What? You think she cares for that—" 

" That gentleman, as you were about to call him, Mr. 
Gutter* is a great sight too good for any shoe-string tying 
of mine." - - • - ■ •• : -;. - .-.-. ■ 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 193 

" Oh, look here — Well, Messiter is a good fellow. I 
admit it. But what of it ? Abstract considerations of 
that sort don't hold in a case of this kind." 

" Oh, I beg your pardon, Cutter," exclaimed Philip, as 
he buttoned one of the collars about his neck. " I forgot 
that you were an expert in these things. Well, what does 
hold ? Out with it ! Let us have the latest ! Don't put 
me off with any of your mouldy, out-of-date decisions. 
Give me the brand-newest opinion there is — something 
that can't be reversed before I can get her assent to it — 
Court of Appeals, preferably." 

Cutter pulled at his mustache, thoughtfully, and blew 
some smoke in Philip's direction. 

" Well, you might hold, for one thing. I have a no- 
tion she likes you." 

" Thanks," returned Philip, dryly. " I believe the 
worst of us have a kindness for our coolies, our dragomen, 
our slaves. WouldnH a woman like a man who made a 
profession, a calling, a vocation of her ; who revered her 
boots ; whose idea of happiness was being stepped on by 
them ; who spent his nights in dreaming new ways to be 
an ass for her sake, and his days in carrying out his 
dreams? Wouldn't she? I should hope so." 

" You have been going it a little strong with her this 
last fortnight. I suppose she has been rather enjoying 
the spectacle." 

" See here, Cutter," said Philip, hotly, " if you think 
Miss Maurice capable of torturing a man for her amuse- 
ment merely, you never were more mistaken in your life. 
She's not that sort. The fineness, the dignity, the genu- 
ineness and truth at that girl, Cutter— Oh, the devil i" 

Cutter was laughing. 



194 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

The servant at the Maurices' cottage said that Miss 
Maurice was in the parlour. The house on which Dorothy 
and her father had finally fixed was the usual frame shell 
of the newer towns of the West. There were better 
houses in Maverick — the Vertners lived, by comparison, 
in a mansion — but there were cruder buildings too — log 
cabins chinked with mortar, and houses constructed out 
of disused packing-boxes, and roofed with canvas. On 
the ground floor, besides the kitchen and the dining- 
room, there was only the pleasant little room at the front 
of the house ; and it was this that the maid-servant called 
a " parlour." It was, in fact, Dorothy's sitting-room and 
sewing-room, though Maurice spoke of it as their draw- 
ing-room. As Philip turned the knob on the door of this 
room, he felt a hand upon it on the other side, and, re- 
leasing his own grasp, the door opened. Jasper stood 
before him in the act of bidding farewell to Dorothy. 
He lifted his head, and, seeing Philip in the doorway, 
stretched out his hand to him with his courtly smile. 
Philip, drawing back to let him pass, kept his gaze fixed on 
his face, looking him in the eye motionlessly, with a black 
glance of scorn. He would not see the hand. Flushing to 
his temples, Jasper gave a contemptuous little laugh, and 
walked by him, turning once more to bow to Miss Maurice. 

When Philip had got himself through the door and 
into the room, he went up to Dorothy in a dazed way, 
and offered her his hand. He thought he perceived a 
kind of reluctance, which she conquered in the imper- 
ceptible moment that passed before she took his hand in 
the frank and hearty clasp that had been from the be- 
ginning one of the little things he had liked best in her. 
Then she asked him quickly if he had seen her type-writer. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 195 



XIII. 

Ik his first groping, and bitter explanations of it to 
himself, Philip saw how natural it was that he should 
find Jasper with her. He had not known of his return, 
and he must have come this morning, as he was certain 
that he had not been in Maverick the day before ; but 
being returned, and hearing of her presence in Maverick, 
what could be more in the course of things than a meet- 
ing of old lovers, long separated, in the first hours of 
Jasper's home-coming ? Oh, it was natural enough ! 

" A type-writer ! " he said, in the easy and flowing 
tones of one who tries to be easy. " I congratulate you. 
It's a great thing. You will write your father's sermons 
now, I suppose." 

" I don't know," she said. " Yes, perhaps, if I can 
learn." 

It was, in fact, a longing desire with her to write her 
father's sermons for him at his dictation — he detested the 
manual labour of writing. But nothing seemed quite so 
possible and worth while as it had seemed a moment ago. 

" Do you know anything about it ? Perhaps you can 
show me," she said, to make conversation. She chafed 
under this difficult exchange : it had never been like this 
between them hitherto. They had always talked freely 
and naturally : it was one of the things which made this 
Mr. Deed a pleasant man to get along with, she had 
thought. He was so straightforward, so simple and 
direct ; he had no attitude, he never got himself up, he 
had not even that man's pose in talking to a woman 
which she disliked. He talked to her, she felt sure, as he 



196 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

might have talked to a man. He understood things 
without being told. Men to whom one had to explain 
irritated her. And now he was not going to understand ; 
and he was defending himself from the natural course of 
their usual talk with an artifice. 

Was it in fact true, then, that such a thing as a frank 
and cordial relation between young men and young 
women was an impossibility ? She heard Philip saying 
that he had once spent a month or two in studying the 
type- writer, as she asked this question of herself. It was 
going to fall in with one of his young plans for being 
successful in some other way than the way his father 
wished, and had been dropped when the plan had fol- 
lowed the other plans. She heard this distantly while she 
passed in hasty review all possible and impossible occa- 
sions for the scene at the door and for his constraint. 
Was the blame hers, in any way ? she asked Jierself . Or, 
whosesoever the blame, might it be her opportunity to 
reconcile them? Dorothy's goodness was always impul- 
sive; the people who did not like the consequences of 
some of her rash bursts of kind-heartedness said that it 
was absurd. It was true that she was good in haste, and 
often repented at leisure ; but she liked better to stumble 
and wound herself, as she must, in her rush to help some 
one who had fallen, than to suck wise maxims about 
prudence in contented inaction. She kept a generous 
scorn for the mincing caution of the proverbs. All 
proverbs were stingy and selfish, she thought, and taught 
one to live for one's self in the handsomest security. 

She went to the type-writer, and began to finger it 
with the gingerly deliberateness of the novice, while he 
stood above her looking on, and they exchanged question 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 197 

and answer without much notion on either side of what 
they were talking about. She was feeling, with a woman's 
sense of social obligation, that she must do something to 
keep the affair moving ; while her kindly puzzlement 
about the little drama at the door went on steadily in her 
thoughts. 

Philip was capable of listening at any time to the tak- 
ing modulations of her sweet, rich Southern voice, with- 
out troubling his head about what she was saying ; and it 
was in this dreamy way that he was listening to her now, 
thinking also, as if it were a novel thought, how utterly 
pretty she was. She was dressed in a house-gown of black, 
with the daintiest suggestion of a dark-green velvet at the 
throat, shoulders, and sleeves ; and the quietness of this 
effect seemed to exalt the beauty of her fresh colouring, 
her good, honest, sincere, admirable eyes, her shapely face. 
How she stared at her type-writing ! He wished she 
would look about at him. It was two minutes since he 
had seen her eyes ; the whimsical brown, floating inter- 
mittently in their grey depths, would have had time to 
change or go. 

There suddenly seemed nothing further to say, and, 
leaning back from the type-writer, she patted her hand 
upon her dress, and called, " Here, Jack ! " A great New- 
foundland dog, which had been lying on the floor by the 
side of the type-writer, leaped up, placing his forepaws in 
her lap, and wagging his tail. Jack had been given up 
by Messiter while they were at Laughing Valley City, and 
it had been one of the pains of her hurried departure that 
she must leave him behind ; but Messiter had arranged to 
have him brought over the Pass by careful hands, and it 
was a week since he had been restored to her. She was 



198 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

extremely fond of him. He plunged his paws in a mo- 
ment into the keyboard of the type- writer, and Philip 
dragged him off. 

The diversion seemed to restore them to themselves, 
for Philip said, more in the tone of their usual talk than 
anything that had been said since he entered the room, 
" I didn't know you had a type- writer." 

And, glad of the change, Dorothy answered : " I 
haven't. To really have a type-writer I suppose one 
should know how to use it, if only a very little ; and be- 
sides, it doesn't belong to me, but to a clergyman, a friend 
of my father, who left it for me to try. He has gone East 
on his vacation, and spent a night with us on his way 
down from Leadville." 

" You will like it immensely. You will hate him when 
he comes to take it back." 

She shook her beautiful head, laughing. " I don't 
know. It makes me — wriggle," she said. " I can't bear 
to pick out the letters. I don't like the noise, and it's all 
so mechanical, so barbarous. It's a great convenience, I 
suppose, and I shall go on with it on papa's account, if I 
find I can. But I can't see how any one could like it. 
What is there to like ? " 

" Everything. Let me show you." 

" Oh, if you do it like that ! " she exclaimed, as he rat- 
tled off a number of sentences, in the seat she gave up to 
him. 

" You must do it like that," he rejoined, without 
looking up from the keyboard, over which his fingers 
twinkled bewilderingly. " You didn't think that you 
were to go hesitatingly from letter to letter, with a 
little fearsome pause between each jump, like Eliza in 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 199 

i Uncle Tom's Cabin' escaping across the floating ice, 
did you ? " 

He was feeling much happier now. After all, it had 
been only a school-girl and -boy engagement. He knew 
that it no longer existed — that it had not existed for four 
years. Was it likely that — pshaw ! Had not Jasper called 
on the day of his arrival in the place ? He had not for- 
gotten. Did he ever forget any purpose? He brought 
himself back to the consideration of the type-writer lesson 
with an effort. 

She was interested. " You won't mind if I ask ques- 
tions?" she said, as she consented to try again for her- 
self. She let her fingers idle over the letters without 
pressing their white circles. " Why isn't the alphabet set 
in order ? " 

" ' The better to puzzle you, my dear,' " quoted Philip, 
absently, but enjoying the use of the epithet. 

" There is a better reason than that," returned Doro- 
thy. She laughed, flushing a little at his phrase. 

" Yes," he admitted ; " you will find it a very good 
thing, after you have gone a little farther, to have the 
most-used letters nearest your hand. Suppose, now, you 
put in a fresh sheet of paper, and try a sentence or two on 
your own account." 

He inserted the paper, showed her the use of the little 
device for separating words, taught her to pull back the 
running-gear at the top at the warning of the bell, made 
plain the means of governing the space between lines, and 
then gave her a little lecture on the position of the small 
and capital letters, the punctuation-marks, and the nu- 
merals. She listened with serious attention, and, as he 
bent over to illustrate his meaning, withdrew herself to 



200 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

leave space for the play of his arms, while he pressed the 
letters, or caught back the sliding-rack. 

In this close and amiable proximity the constraint be- 
tween them of a few moments back seemed already to have 
aged itself into an unhistoried past. She was wondering 
how this could be the man who had given Jasper the 
look at the door which she could not forget ; and he was 
saying to himself that in all the world there were not 
eyes like those he looked down into when she would 
glance up suddenly from time to time to ask him a ques- 
tion, or to give one of her flashing turns to his replies, 
with that charming manner of reserved freedom which 
was constantly a new grace in her. 

She became proficient enough at last to write out co- 
herent sentences for herself, and together they found the 
things she wrote very amusing. 

" Suppose you see if you can read what I write from 
the movement of my fingers, Mr. Deed," she said. " You 
are not to turn the cylinder up to look ; but only to read, 
if you can, as I go along." She began m a kind of em- 
barrassment, and did not get on as well with the first 
words as she had in her earlier experiments. But she 
tried again, in a moment, and completed the sentence 
with a little air of bravado. 

She kept her eyes on the keyboard, but as he did not 
speak she glanced up at him hastily. 

" Oh ! " exclaimed Philip, recalled to himself. " I was 
to read from your fingers. Well, shall we begin?" 

Dorothy laughed nervously. " We have begun," she 
said. " Didn't you see ? " 

" Oh, yes, yes ! " assented he. " Or — no ; I was — " 
It was impossible to say that he had been watching the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 201 

movement of her fingers, and speculating upon the ques- 
tion whether all women had such hands, and why he had 
never noticed how adorably contrived for type-writing 
they were. He had got to the point of remembering that 
he had seen a number of young girls hammering away at 
type-writers in offices without being moved by the spec- 
tacle, when her glance called him back. 

" Will you write it again ? " he asked. " I will really 
watch this time." 

" Oh, I don't think I could write it again," returned 
Dorothy, quickly. 

"Why not? As a punishment for inattention? I 
suppose I've deserved it," he said. 

" No ; I don't think I ought." 

" It was a real sentence, then. I claim it as a right, 
in that case. You have made a communication to me, 
Miss Maurice. You've no right to withhold it. It has 
passed out of your hands." 

" Yes," owned she, with amusement, " that's true ; but 
it didn't pass into your eyes. I offered it to you, and 
you wouldn't look. You were engaged." 

" Then you are punishing me, and that's equally un- 
fair." 

" No — no, I'm not," she denied doubtfully ; " but — " 
with a whimsical smile that enchanted him — " why, it 
was not discreet, what I wrote." She smiled up at 
him. 

" No? " he asked, in pure enjoyment. 

" No." And then, in a moment, " You wouldn't urge 
me to be m-discreet? " 

" No, I shouldn't urge it. I should insist upon it. I 
do. Come ! " he said, and she wondered why she liked 



202 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

his air of domination better than Jasper's, though she did 
not altogether dislike Jasper's. 

"And the demon said unto me, 'Write!'" para- 
phrased she. 

" It was an angel," said Philip. 

" Was it ? " She bent her hands hesitantly above the 
keyboard. " But you must promise to stay angel," she 
said, suddenly arresting herself. She glanced up doubt- 
fully at his face. " No ; I won't write it again. It wasn't 
wise ; it wasn't — nice." 

" That settles it, then : I must see it." 

" No," repeated Dorothy ; " you wouldn't like it. It 
was a quite wrong thing to ask." Her fingers hovered 
above the keyboard meditatively. She suddenly began to 
pick out the letters. 

Philip followed her fingers closely. He read, letter by 
letter, " Why wouldn't you speak to your brother at the 
door ? " 

He rose abruptly from his stooping position above the 
machine, colouring painfully. 

She looked up, at his impulsive movement, and rose 
herself. " Oh, what have I done ? " she exclaimed at 
sight of his face. After a miserable pause : " You needn't 
tell me. It was very wrong of me. I knew it. But it 
wasn't I who asked, Mr. Deed. I would never have asked 
— not myself. I thought," she said, gathering her ex- 
planations painfully, " or the type- writer thought, — it 
wasn't I — it escaped me, — that perhaps I could reconcile, 
bring you togeth — " The words died upon her lips. " It 
was a foolish thought, I see ; and yet," she added, with 
recovered dignity, " perhaps I had a kind of right to it. 
Your brother is an old friend," — Philip looked up at this, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 203 

— " and you — you have been very good. We have always 
felt that we partly owe our lives to you — father and I — 
since the day of the storm, and — " Philip lifted his 
hand with an appealing gesture. " Well, there's nothing 
else to say, except that I'm very sorry. But, oh, Mr. 
Deed," she cried suddenly, " why won't you make it up 
with him, whatever it is — and be — be friends ? I'm sure 
he can't have done anything very bad — nothing that 
could make it right that you should turn from him. He 
is good — sometimes he is hard, and he is always master- 
ful : yes — but he is good. You must feel that." 

" Oh, yes," said Philip ; " I feel that." 

She glanced at him doubtfully, as if in question of his 
tone. 

" I'm sure I've every reason to know of his goodness," 
she said, after a pause, with feeling. " If it hadn't been 
for that—" 

" You wouldn't have been here to appreciate it with 
me, perhaps. ~No ; I remember that. It's another of the 
quiet things, done without talk or fuss, by which Jasper 
has put me in his debt. I owe him a great deal, Miss 
Maurice — more than you know." 

Again she hesitated at an indefinable note in his voice ; 
but she said immediately, with her usual openness : 

" I suppose an elder brother has always that great ad- 
vantage — the advantage of being able to do a great deal 
for a younger brother. It must be very pleasant to him, 
and he must always wish, if he is a man like your brother, 
to do always a little more, that he may be able to make 
you forget his friendly advantage over you by the mere 
quantity of his friendliness." 

In the midst of his pain and bitterness, Philip could 



204 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

not help smiling faintly at this, but he said, with less care 
about his tone : " Oh, yes ; I've never had to complain of 
short weight with Jasper. He doesn't do things by halves. 
When he does a really friendly thing, he heaps the meas- 
ure up, and runs it over. I don't always know what to do 
with so much magnanimity. You can't put a landslide 
in your pocket, you know, Miss Maurice, and sometimes 
you can't even find your manners in time to make your 
bow." 

She could not avoid feeling the sardonic undertone 
this time, and she thought she saw, at once, that the cause 
of offence between them, whatever it was, was largely due 
to Mr. Philip Deed's sensitive, almost nervous, pride ; and 
she thought, too, that she could guess pretty clearly, from 
her knowledge of the two men, something about what 
would be the usual situation between them. She could 
see how Philip might detest his brother at times for his 
very power of doing him favours. She knew how that was, 
herself. She was painfully aware in herself of the strain 
of meanness, or self-will, or conceit, — she did not know 
what it was, — that made the kind of generosity which is 
open-handed enough to allow another to be generous 
among the most difficult kinds of unselfishness, and she 
could understand — yes, she could understand entirely — 
how Philip (whose pride would be less manageable than 
her own by the degree in which it was a man's and com- 
manding) would feel this peculiarly. The very delicacy 
with which Jasper would try to conceal a kindness would 
be an added offence: the need for delicacy was itself 
humiliating. She could imagine how Philip would be- 
come angered on provocation of this sort, and how Jasper 
would helplessly make the matter worse — not that there 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 205 

would be any way of making it better— by his forbearance. 
It would be the kind of case in which neither was to 
blame, and in which each must blame the other. 

Filled with this idea, she said, with a note of sympathy 
in her voice that at first bewildered and then angered 
Philip, and finally caused him to laugh a little to himself 
at the completeness of her error : " I'm sure we must all 
have felt that. It's strange, isn't it, that it should be so 
hard to accept a kindness as we all find it ? One would 
think that the effort connected with a kindness would be 
all over when it had been done. It isn't so very easy even 
to do it ; but to receive it needs heroism. At least I find 
it does. And I can understand how you would feel that 
way about your brother, even when you were most grate- 
ful to him ; and you would all the time be divided be- 
tween a wish to make him feel how much you appreciated 
his kindness, and a wish to box his ears." 

" Oh, it's not a divided wish," said Philip, falling in 
with her mistake as the easiest defence that offered ; and 
at this they both laughed. 

" His ears must be smarting most of the time," said 
she, as her laugh ended in a smile. 

" Why, no ; not all the time," returned Philip, un- 
warily. 

" You mean — " she began, still smiling. 

" Nothing that I'd better tell you," he said, quickly 
withdrawing. 

" Oh, Mr. Deed," she exclaimed, with an electrical re- 
turn to soberness, " I see that there is something really 
serious between you — something that I mustn't intrude 
on. Forgive me ! I have been thinking it one of those 
little disagreements that a word would set right — one of 



206 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

those wretched mistakes where two persons need only to 
be explained to each other. I see I can't do it ; but you 
can, Mr. Deed." 

" What ? Explain myself to Jasper ? " 

" I don't know. Make it right with him, or whatever 
men call it. Some one has always to play the generous 
part, don't you think, where there has been — has been a 
disagreement ? " 

" No, Miss Maurice ; I can't do that." He turned 
away from her, and strode towards the window. 

" Oh, that is not like you, Mr. Deed ! He would not 
hesitate, I am sure, in your place." 

" In my place ? " returned he. She began to stammer 
a reply ; but he said, " Oh, I beg your pardon — my place, 
in the wrong ? No ; my brother would not hesitate in my 
place." 

" I did not say that," she put in sorrowfully. She saw 
that she had implied it. 

"It doesn't need saying, Miss Maurice. You only 
recognize a universal fact. There are laws of character, 
you know, and a planetary orbit is wobbly to them. 
Everybody who knows us at all would know, without 
telling, that in any question between us I must be in the 
wrong." 

"And are you in the wrong in this?" she asked 
earnestly. " Tell me frankly. I will believe whatever 
you say. You bewilder me. I don't know what to think. 
Tell me ! " she repeated. 

Philip laughed harshly. " You must ask Jasper that." 

" I will," she said. 

"No; don't, Miss Maurice. Don't on any account. 
Don't think of such a thing." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 207 

" Ah, he would be more fair ! " 

" Promise me that you will not say a word of this to 
Jasper." 

" Tell me yourself, then, Mr. Deed." 

Philip took a turn up and down the room. " I can't," 
he said at last. 

" You see what you leave me to think," she said sadly. 

" Nothing good of me/' he answered bitterly. 

She glanced up at his face. The frankness and gen- 
uineness which she had always liked in his look shone 
through the hurt which possessed him, and gave her con- 
fidence to say, looking up to the tall, strong-limbed figure 
standing above her, "Do you think it just to your brother 
to leave him under the imputation of such a silence ? " 

Philip started. " Jasper ? " he said. 

" Surely. Your silence implies — it seems to say that 
your brother is somehow much in the wrong ; or else — " 

" Or else ? " asked Philip, steadily. 

" I will not say what else. But if that is so, it is fair, 
it is right, that you should tell me." She sat down ab- 
ruptly, as if not quite certain of herself. 

Philip felt, girdingly, the extreme inconvenience at- 
taching to all endeavours to do the fair-minded thing — 
the impossibility, namely, of explaining with decency. 

" In order that you may not be thinking me much in 
the wrong ? " he said. " No, Miss Maurice ; I couldn't do 
that." He turned away. 

"You are not fair," she said, after a moment, with 
dignity. " I do not know that there is any right or wrong 
in the matter. I am ignorant of everything but that you 
would not bow to your brother in my presence. I have 
put my plea on the score of peacemaking, and if you feel 
14 



208 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

that I have meddled, I am rightly served ; but I have a 
right to ask why you should put a slight on a gentleman 
whom you meet here as — as — " her voice broke — " as my 
guest, Mr. Deed." 

He came back and stood before her. " You have a 
right to ask that, Miss Maurice, and perhaps I have no 
right not to answer you. But I cannot answer you." 

" Then I must think—" 

" That I have done a wrong to Jasper which I am un- 
willing to repair or own. Yes, Miss Maurice." 

" I do not mean that," she said wistfully, and he saw 
that she was on the verge of tears, yet had to blunder 
savagely on. 

" What else can you mean ? There is but the choice. 
You must believe in Jasper or in me." 

" Oh, I knew it ! " she cried, as if to herself. " I fore- 
saw it ! It was for that that I had to try to make it right 
between you. I could not bear — " She broke down sud- 
denly. 

" You mean that you wished to keep us both for friends. 
You know now that that is impossible. We are enemies. 
We cannot have or keep a common friend. Which will 
you choose ? " 

The passionate tone of demand roused her. She 
straightened herself imperceptibly in her seat on the 
couch, and raised her head, looking up, and confronting 
his flushed face. 

" I will answer your question when you have answered 
mine," she said. 

She rose, and held out her hand listlessly. Philip took 
it as formally, and suddenly left the room. His head was 
down. He felt sick — spiritually sick to his inmost fibre. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 209 



XIV. 

Philip went out and got on his horse, and rode fu- 
riously towards the " Snow Find." This was the end, he 
supposed. And for this, again, he had to thank Jasper. 
He gnashed his teeth as he set his spur in the pony's flank 
and swept over the long level stretch by the river, outside 
the town. He had made a fool of himself again, and, as 
usual, not in a way in which Jasper would have made a 
fool of himself. His sense of the unhandsomeness, of the 
impossibility, of telling her of the actual state of the case 
between them seemed in this open light of the prairie, 
with the wind blowing in his face, an incredible piece of 
folly. Why should he consider Jasper ? Would he have 
spared him in the same situation ? 

He saw at once that this had nothing to do with the 
matter, and that it was not for Jasper's sake that he 
had held his tongue. It was for his own : he couldn't 
have gone on living in the body of a man who had told 
her that. • If he had told it he knew very well with 
what object he would have spoken. He would have done 
it to malign his rival to her (it had come to that between 
him and Jasper ; he might as well face it) ; he would 
have done it to take a sneaking advantage with a woman 
of an opportunity to spike another man's guns. That 
would be bad enough with any man for his rival ; but 
with Jasper it would be a thing which he would never 
be able to hold up his head after doing. It became too 
dirty a piece of reprisal to think of. The perception of 
the impossibility of doing anything to Jasper's injury, 
which he had urged upon his father, had laid a firm and 



210 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

withholding grip upon him in the midst of the tempta- 
tion to tell her everything ; and now it reasserted itself 
as a final motive, as a thing not to be questioned or 
dodged; as a principle to which he must be faithful, 
wholly without regard to what it might cost him. It had 
cost him indirectly his father's friendship, already, and 
had driven his father to the wretched refuge of flight 
from an imagined evil ; and now it had probably cost his 
own happiness. He cursed Jasper, as he thought of it, 
between his teeth. 

He was glad to be going to Durango on the morrow 
to seek his father ; he thought he should remain a week. 
But in the event he was back the second day. It had be- 
come a necessity to him to see her, if only at a hopeless 
distance. 

Dorothy often bit her lip in the days immediately 
following Philip's call, when she thought of the part she 
had played. She had been wrong in meddling, of course, 
and she accused herself bitterly; but she also accused 
him. What right had he to drag her into the question 
between himself and his brother, whatever it was? Why 
should she take sides ? She said to herself that, whatever 
he might do, he should not change her neutrality. She 
was the friend of both. What effect could any quarrel 
between them have upon that fact ? She was most their 
friend when she refused to allow their difference to in- 
vade her relation to them. She was grateful to Jasper 
for refraining from making on his part so difficult a de- 
mand upon her friendship ; she felt his silence about the 
whole matter to be a fine generosity. It delicately im- 
plied the real character of the difference between the 
brothers as she had guessed it from the first ; it was part 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 211 

of that forbearance which he would have used to avoid 
the quarrel itself, and which he would now be the first to 
tender to his brother if he would accept it. The other 
kind of generosity — the freedom with which Philip gave 
himself and all that he had in the smaller daily matters — 
she saw was, after all, a less deep and genuine unselfish- 
ness than this patient restraint and self-effacement of 
Jasper's. In smaller things his attitude had not the 
charm of Philip's gay and thoughtless open-handed ness ; 
but when a serious opportunity arose — an opportunity for 
a brave and self-denying magnanimity — it was easy to see 
which was the stronger. She said to herself that it was 
true, what she had often thought, that Philip was light. 

When a woman makes reflections like these, it would 
be a mistake to seek their basis wholly in the psycholog- 
ical facts with which she believes herself to be reasoning. 
It was at all events true that before Dorothy had matured 
all of these thoughts about the character of the brothers, 
Philip had remained away from the house several days, 
and that a certain chivalric reserve in Jasper's bearing 
towards an old question between them had renewed in 
her a vague remorse. 

She had supposed herself to have settled all that, to 
have put it away in the lumber-room of her memory, 
where she need visit it only in those moments of senti- 
ment when a dreamy willingness to pain herself possessed 
her. But a discarded lover is both a more material and a 
more importunate fact when he happens to be in the 
same town than when he lives before the mental vision 
only in the letter of dignified complaint which must 
be answered with the statement of an unhappy truth. 
Jasper, in the flesh, patient, unreproachful, and obdurately 



212 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

faithful to a love which she had fancied as dead in him 
as it was in her, was a different man from the one she 
had pictured as suffering for as long a time as her action 
had remained a vivid theme of remorse to her, and as 
getting over it by the same gradual process through which 
she had emerged from her remorse. He had not got over 
it, and he was by her side. 

Their engagement, if one could call it that, — if it was 
the kind of engagement on which marriage is supposed 
to follow ; Dorothy believed that she had never called it 
that to herself, — had been one of the school-boy and -girl 
follies at which one smiles with wonder at twenty-five, and 
tells to one's grandchildren at sixty with a fond laugh, 
and a passing inward question touching the colour of 
those curls now. It had been a pleasant diversion between 
them — the kind of thing which is a little more intense 
and a little more entertaining than the tennis that one 
would be playing at that age if one were not engaged in 
being engaged ; but to think of it as the sort of stuff of 
wfcich one would make a life, was to speak from the dis- 
ordered outlook upon things in which all measures and 
values melt into a mess of triviality. 

It had lasted between them until Dorothy began to 
go out into society, and to see the world and other men. 
She did not begin to compare, then, but she perceived a 
betrothal to be a different matter from the agreeable play- 
thing it had seemed at school : she began to question with 
her conscience whether she had a right to go on with so 
serious a thing unseriously. Was it dealing fairly by 
him ? She saw that it was not ; yet she tried, with a 
woman's devotion to an impossible unselfishness, to keep 
it up. Jasper had gone West to the ranch by this time, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 213 

and in degree as the affair seemed wrong and mistaken to 
her, she found herself endeavouring to make up to him 
for the wrong (which, if it was really any of hers, was 
hers unconsciously) by writing him more faithfully. 
This, too, seemed dishonest, after a time, and, in despair, 
she let the correspondence flag, believing, or hoping, that 
he would divine what had happened, and that he would 
save her the pain of explaining. Surely it was natural 
enough ; he was a man by this time, as she was a woman, 
and he must know how inevitable it was. 

He perceived as quickly as she could have desired that 
there was a change ; but he showed no inclination to spare 
her in defining it. Brought face to face with the neces- 
sity for action, she passed a bitter time, in which she 
struggled with her conscience and the proprieties. To a 
young girl it still seems doubtful whether, after all, she 
may not better wreck her life and a man's than be talked 
about. In her highest moments of self-sacrifice she 
thought she could go on with it; then it would come 
time to write him a letter, and she would see that she 
could not even do as much as that. How was she to live 
with him for fifty years ? 

Jasper's complaint took at last that tone of demand 
which lay under the surface of his most pliant moods; 
and in the end she saw that she must write him all that 
was in her heart. It was a very right-spirited letter, tell- 
ing him the bare truth : that she did not love him as she 
had supposed, that to marry with no better feeling than 
she could bring to him would be a permanent wrong to 
both him and her, and would merely procure their com- 
mon unhappiness ; and begging him to release her from 
their engagement. Jasper came on to the Pennsylvania 



214 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

city where her father was just then settled over a church, 
and an interview followed of the sort which men and 
women remember on their death-beds. But she did not 
yield, and Jasper went back to the ranch a changed man. 
He was hard about women now ; he felt himself cruelly 
misused. He was very bitter. He sai£ to himself that 
he did not care what he did now. She was responsible 
for it. He had said as much to her in his anger. Doro- 
thy, in fact, stood for and symbolized every good thought 
that he had ever had : she was the goddess of his dreams 
of being some time a little cleaner and a more straight- 
forward man than he had yet contrived to be. He was 
accustomed to say that she could do anything with him, 
and he had kept her in a species of bondage to this, while 
they had been together during their engagement. 

This was one of the facts which had wrought upon 
Dorothy while it was still a question whether she should 
do right to break the engagement ; it was part of the 
perilous power that there is for every woman in the pas- 
sionate need for her of a man who does not on other 
accounts create an answering need in her. It is perhaps 
a phase of the mother instinct into which all forms of 
woman's love tend to dissolve ; but it is certainly always 
an argument with a woman strong out of all proportion 
to its actual validity ; and it had not only been a part of 
the reluctant push towards the self-sacrifice she had once 
contemplated, but, in meeting Jasper, the sense of it was 
found to have still a power for pain. 

She was surprised and chagrined that it should be so, 
but so it was; and in the solitude of her chamber at 
night, after Jasper had taken away his melancholy eyes, 
with the look of a settled sorrow in them, and she had 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 215 

freed herself from the influence of his patient reserve 
about all that had been between them, she wept miserable 
tears. She dried them when she remembered to be indig- 
nant at his attitude. She would rather a thousand times 
be upbraided for what she had done — if she had done 
anything — than to be arraigned by that deferential silence 
which forbearingly would not bring its charge. It was a 
studied insult, she said to herself. But the next day it 
seemed a chivalry beyond praise. It seemed this most 
when she recognized, as she found herself doing in occa- 
sional flashes, her girlish ideal in his handsome face and 
figure, his daring and commanding manner, his air of 
power, his effect of having his hand on the wheel of the 
earth, his brilliant and indomitable will. 

Jasper came often during this period of Philip's with- 
drawal ; but she never proposed to him the question she 
had told Philip she should ask him. Something in his 
manner when she mentioned Philip forbade it; and it 
would be unfair, she saw, to make him own up to the gal- 
lant gentleness and magnanimity he would have used in 
all this affair with his sensitive and high-strung brother. 
The use of the adjectives that both condemned and 
praised him brought Philip sharply before her mind, and 
she felt again, as if it had been at the moment, the pain 
that the scene between them had given her. She liked 
him too well to wish to hurt him, and she had felt that 
she was hurting him with every word she said. Perhaps 
he was too easily wounded ; but that seemed, now, a fault 
that one might forgive — nay, certainly ought to forgive — 
to such an occasion. How hot-headed he was ! She 
found herself saying this, with a kind of laughing fond- 
ness, to herself. It seemed suddenly almost a likable 



216 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

trait in him. It was his fineness — the wrong side of it, 
to be sure, but still his fineness. And if he was swift to 
anger, he was swift to feel : it was because of that. It 
was easy for other men to be calm : they did not care so 
much — perhaps did not care at all. This made her think 
of Jasper ; and to think of Jasper made her lift her eyes 
from her type-writer, and allow her glance to rove out of 
doors, with an impulsive wish that it might be Philip in- 
stead of Jasper with whom she was to ride at two o'clock. 
The Maurices' house stood, not far from the Vertners', 
on the outskirts of the town, and the sun swept an un- 
broken stretch of plain to look on Dorothy at her win- 
dow. The glowing light and the brisk air without gave 
her a longing to be galloping away into the shining day. 
Her eyes rested with liking on the broad, sunlit level 
reaching to the mountains. "If she looked straight before 
her she could keep the prospect untouched by the sight 
of a single habitation. She heaved a little sigh. She 
should probably never meet Philip again, let alone ride 
w T ith him. The outlook from her window gave all her 
thoughts a pleasant turn, however ; and she saw herself 
forgiving something to any one who should ride up into 
the foreground of this prospect leading a saddle-horse. 



XV. 

Jasper took up the interrupted thread of his life at 
the ranch with zest, in ignorance of what had happened 
in his absence. It gave him an agreeable thrill to resume 
his place, to vault into the seat of authority, once more, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 217 

in putting his leg over Vixen's back. He wondered, as 
he went about on his horse, hearing reports and giving 
orders, why he ever abandoned even temporarily this little 
kingdom, where his word was law, and where he could 
see from day to day his personal foresight, shrewdness, 
and force taking visible shape in the increase of his herd, 
in the extension of his domain, and in the growth of his 
influence among the cattle-men of the district. Yes, it 
was a mistake to spend his time in running across the 
continent, while this position was his at home — a position 
which he would not barter for that of any one he knew ; 
which he would not sell, knowing what he did of the fu- 
ture it promised, for any sum he was likely to be offered ; 
and which he would not share with any one on earth. 

Ah, yes. To be sure he had done right to go to New 
York. The intention he foresaw in his father to force 
the question of Philip's share in the range on him, before 
his marriage, threatened the position itself. It was not a 
thing he could wish to face out personally ; and if he had 
ever had the slightest inclination to divide his power at 
the ranch, this would have been the last time he would 
have selected. Just now, when the fruits of the hard 
work, the sagacity, the devotion of his five years on the 
range began to show, was he to share results— and, much 
worse, control over future results— with Philip ? He had 
borne the burden and heat of the day, had watered and 
tended his little tree, had suffered and groaned and 
sweated to bring it to bearing ; and here came Philip 
loafing, in his usual way, into a soft thing that some one 
else had paid for, and wanting to help pick the fruit and 
reorganize gardening methods. Jasper had looked on 
with a scornful eye while Philip spread his series of idle 



218 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

and fatuous experiments over a wide geography. If his 
father was willing to pay for such cleverness in devising 
schemes for dodging the main point, he wasn't. The 
main point, as he saw it, was work — hard work, guided 
by stiff common sense. He was a worker himself, and he 
wasn't taking into partnership fellows who liked fishing 
better than fence-building, and who, in place of his ca- 
pacity for making one dollar two, knew only how to 
spend one and borrow two. 

In Maverick, Jasper was welcomed back heartily, for 
the most part. There were men who had been over- 
reached by him in a cattle-trade who marred the pleasure 
he found in the general acclamation by avoiding him, or 
by greeting him surlily ; there was a widow whom he had 
been obliged to press in a little foreclosure matter con- 
nected with a house he had bought on speculation in 
Maverick, and she had her circle of sympathizers. But 
these were trifling notes in the chorus of good-will. Just 
before leaving for New York, Jasper had succeeded in 
organizing the cattle-men of the valley into a Mutual Pro- 
tective Association, designed to check cattle-thieving (by 
which many owners had suffered heavily of late) ; to ap- 
ply a stricter system to the round-ups ; to put a stop to the 
loose practice of branding mavericks, wherever found, be- 
tween round-ups ; to join other associations in petitioning 
Congress for a better law to prevent the spread of the foot- 
and-mouth disease among cattle ; and especially to keep 
all newcomers out of the valley, the association officially 
declaring the range to be overstocked. 

There had been certain difficulties in forming the 
combination; half a dozen forces, from various causes, 
were against it ; and the fact that Jasper, against all op- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 219 

position, had pushed his plan to a successful conclusion 
had given him, in his absence, a new and stronger posi- 
tion in Maverick. He had always been popular ; but the 
town now began to feel that it owed him something. 
There was even talk of nominating him in the spring for 
the office his father had once held ; and it was said that, 
if he played his cards well, he needn't stop at the may- 
oralty. 

At least one eye watched interestedly the subdued and 
decent air of triumph with which Jasper received these 
signs of the predominance which he might presently 
claim in the town. Mr. Snell's sagacious glance pursued 
him furtively from behind the windows of his Miners' 
Supply Store, as he rode by on horseback, when he came 
into Maverick from the ranch — following his disappear- 
ance down the street with a sardonic smile, and a slow, 
humorous working of his tongue within his cheek, which 
seemed to do him good. 

They were all at Ira's one night when some one said 
that he supposed the next thing they would hear would 
be that Jasper had bought out his father's half interest in 
the ranch. He said that he had heard — he didn't know 
whether there was anything in it or not, of course, but he 
had heard — that Jasper had made an almighty good thing 
in stocks while he was on in New York. Trust him for 
knowing a good thing ! He seemed to have his father's 
long business head with something else besides — some- 
thing like clutch. Nobody ever heard of his letting go of 
anything that he once laid his fist over, and his father, 
spite of his will (it was a dose for an adult, that will ; the 
speaker had tried it), had let things slip, and lost a for- 
tune. It would be queer if Jasper should pull up and 



220 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

pass his father in the race, now wouldn't it ? It would be 
like Deed to be glad. He was gone on those sons of his. 
He didn't seem to have his natural sense where they were 
concerned. But it would be interesting if, after his father 
had given him a half share in the partnership, Jasper 
should be able to buy the other half for himself. 

" Queer partnership, that, anyway," grunted Mr. Snell 
from the other side of the cloud of smoke that filled the 
bar-room. Snell was reputed to have made a fortune in 
fitting out mining-parties, in the early days of the Lead- 
ville boom, with a very bad grade of goods at prices not 
without a touch of naivete for the impartial spectator not 
obliged to pay them. And he had made a good thing by 
" grub-staking " two or three young men who had been 
lucky in prospecting the hills about Aspen. With the 
coming of fortune he had put on a precise habit of speech 
(it was a carefully made garment, but the old would some- 
times play him the low trick of showing through in patch- 
es), and had waked up one morning with a respect for 
himself which required the use of the third person in re- 
ferring to Mr. Snell. 

"What Mr. Snell says is like this," continued Mr. 
Snell : " A man's all off as soon as he begins bringing 
family considerations into business. Mr. Snell has noth- 
ing against them : he's a family man himself. But he 
says to his sons, he says, 'Look here now, Fred, if you 
want anything out of your old father, you have got to 
earn it ; and if you want to do business with him, you 
have got to do business on business principles, every time, 
sir.' And he does it, too, gentlemen. The rate of inter- 
est is just as high under Mr. Snell's roof and fig-tree as it 
is down at his store. The multiplication-table was always 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 221 

good enough for me, and I guess it'll have to do for my 
boys," he added grimly, with an unwary lapse into the 
first person. 

" Two per cent, a month, unquestionable security, 
notes protested right along — that's what does it, gentle- 
men. Ask no favours, and take none ; and more especially 
have a cast-iron, copper-riveted, water-tight contract with 
your relatives, if you're foolish enough to have any, and 
bail the machine dry of family feeling before you start. 
Now, Mr. Deed has got a notion in his head, near as I can 
make out, that there's two answers to twice two. Down 
in town here it makes four ; but out at the ranch, when 
he's dealing with that son of his, Jasper, it makes five, or 
three, or some other fool figger." 

A loyal murmur rose from the crowd at this, and Snell 
concluded doggedly : " Well, anyway, what Mr. Snell says 
is like this : ' There's a place for everything,' he says, ' and 
the place for family feeling is at the family fireside.' " 

" Family furnace up Mr. Snell's way, ain't it, Snell ? " 
asked one of the group. He was joked on his peculiarity, 
of course, but the town did not venture far in this direc- 
tion. He owned a good share of the houses of Maverick, 
was a hard landlord, and employed a number of people in 
his business and at his mines. Times were not always — 
perhaps never — of the best in Maverick ; and no one felt 
that he could quite afford the luxury of making an enemy 
of Snell. 

" I've put in a furnace lately, sir, I admit. Yes, sir," 
said he, truculently ; " and I may be out of my count," he 
went on, with a remote implication which was not lost on 
men who liked their humour oblique, " but I think — I say 
I think, young man — I've got a receipt for the coal bill." 



222 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Come back to make things hum again out at your 
ranch, I judge," Mr. Snell said to Jasper when, about a 
week after the talk between Dorothy and Philip, Jasper 
stopped his horse in the street to speak to him. Jasper 
made a point of speaking all men fair, and humouring the 
willingness of everybody to believe his existence a con- 
stant matter for joyous surprise to all good fellows. 

" Yes, Mr. Snell, yes ; things get to loose ends in the 
master's absence, don't they? Personal supervision is the 
only plan, I find. I know it's your plan. Not many 
things escape your eye." 

Mr. Snell drew his lips to a point, and, stroking them 
deprecatingly, pretended to weigh the question. " Well, 
not a great," he consented. " I suppose, now, you rather 
enjoy seeing the wheels start up again," he went on in a 
moment, in another tone ; " like to crack your whip and 
see things moving, eh ? " 

Jasper glanced at him. " Why, it's pleasant to be 
back," he said. " When a man really likes his business, 
there's nothing like business, after all, is there, Mr. Snell ? " 

" Nothing," agreed Mr. Snell — " nothing. Not if it is 
your business, at least," he qualified ; " not if you run the 
machine, not if you're on top." 

" Well, we shouldn't care to be anywhere else, should 
we, Mr. Snell ? " laughed Jasper, easily. 

Mr. Snell flashed his furtive look on him, and dropped 
his eyes immediately. " No," he assented, with his dry 
smile. It was a wrinkled smile, like the skin of a last 
year's apple, withered and pensive and loose. It seemed 
to become in a moment a little large for his face, and he 
hastily smoothed it out. " No," he repeated ; " I don't 
believe we should. You wouldn't, anyway, I judge. You 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 223 

wouldn't never be caught hankering, Mr. Snell guesses, 
for the place of that fellow in the theatre orchestras that 
hits them brasses once in a while, and dandles them 
sleigh-bells, and whacks his drum in between. I guess, 
if any one was to do much figgering about your place, 
they'd see you belonged a leetle nigher the middle of the 
orchestra — something not too all-fired far from the con- 
ductor's chair ; and I shouldn't wonder if they come 
around to the idee that the centre of his chair was not far 
off the right thing. You'd want a baton in your hand, 
and then matters would begin to rumble around there. 
Eh ? " he shouted in enjoyment, rubbing his hands. 

Jasper laughed. He could enjoy even Mr. Snell's 
attribution of the naturalness of the place of command to 
him. 

Snell went away, rubbing his hands with a glee out of 
proportion to the superficial dimensions of the joke ; and 
when he was alone in his private office at the store, drew 
a paper indorsed u Bill of Sale of ' Triangle Outfit ' " from 
a bundle of documents in his safe, and, seating himself in 
his capacious leather chair, read it over in smiling silence. 

When Jasper, while still at breakfast next morning, 
saw Snell's leathery face come suddenly into the sunny 
prospect from his window, appearing and disappearing 
with the motions of his horse, he was unable to imagine 
why he should be taking the long ride from Maverick at 
such an hour to see him. He had had no dealings with 
him for nearly a year ; what should he want of him ? He 
accounted for his presence for a moment by the fantastic 
supposition that Snell was running out to see him for a 
little early morning exercise, and for the pleasure of a 
chat with him; and he allowed himself a smile at this 
15 



224 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

idea. Snell no more took aimless exercise on horseback 
than the other residents of Maverick did, and if it was a 
question of riding five miles for the sake of a chat with 
him (Jasper), he thought he saw Snell wasting good busi- 
ness time in that fashion. The talk of yesterday came 
back to him : he had thought at the time that old Snell 
(he called him old, though he was scarcely fifty, because, 
in the absence of the absolutely old in the West, middle 
age has to typify senility) probably wanted something with 
all that palavering, and here he was to make what profit 
he could out of it. Jasper determined that it should be 
small. It was a bore, his coming at breakfast-time. 
Couldn't he let a man eat his meals in peace 1 he growled 
to himself. 

Jasper combined with his habit of hard work certain 
luxurious tastes, which he did not allow to interfere with 
business. He rose early for work (it was one of his counts 
against Philip that he was never up to breakfast) ; but he 
liked a dash of Florida water in his bath, and spent rather 
more than an hour in grooming himself for the day. He 
listened to reports about the condition of things within 
the immediate precinct of the ranch-house from his cow- 
boy cook at breakfast, and gave him his orders then ; but 
he required a dainty table from him, and did not spare 
the daily energy necessary to secure a luxury so foreign 
to every condition of the life he was leading. He dressed 
like his men because they would not have tolerated any- 
thing else, and because it was part of his pose of good 
fellow to make himself one of them ; but it was one of 
the marvels of the Valley that he should be allowed to go 
so neat without losing acceptance with his cow-punchers. 
It was certainly not because he was obviously a man who 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 225 

must be neat and dainty to live, that this unworthy nice- 
ness was pardoned in him, though the most casual glance 
must have shown any one that, — but through the respect 
he commanded among his men on other accounts. For a 
range of fifty miles about the ranch it was understood 
that Jasper Deed was not the man one would choose to 
monkey with. 

The loose hang of his dressing-gown about his stal- 
wart figure, as he sat at breakfast, concealed the physical 
sufficiency which was one of the sources of this feeling ; 
as he rose and stretched himself and went to the window 
to bow to Snell, with his hands thrust deep into the low 
pockets of the robe, it might have been guessed, perhaps. 
He had, in fact, no such strength as Philip's ; but his 
closely knit frame gave him the credit to the eye of every 
ounce of force in him, while Philip's sturdy figure, carried 
without Jasper's distinction, had only the effect of its rude 
power. Jasper was one of the perfectly molded physical 
products which Nature turns out in her most careful and 
workmanlike — perhaps not her most inspired — moods. 
He was built like a firmly rooted, straight, strong young 
tree ; and his grace, his refinement, his physical adequacy 
were like that ; they took the beholder with their absolute 
adaptability to their function, with the propriety of their 
place in Nature. It was this effect in him which made it 
seem natural that he should keep himself trim ; it was by 
way of being a tribute of respect to so right a figure in 
the pageant of things. 

His face had the symmetry that goes with such per- 
fect forms. It was not very unlike certain other correct 
and manly faces, of course. That is the penalty one pays 
for having the standard face — that in degree as other faces 



226 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

approach the standard they must be like one's own ; but 
even this fault was mitigated, when he spoke, by a hard 
line of determination which formed itself on each side of 
his mouth, and by the glance of resolve shining from his 
eyes. The little frown habitually lowering his strongly 
marked eyebrows, and a habit of twisting the end of his 
heavy golden mustache, when he spoke, as if quelling 
things stronger than it would be useful to say, contributed 
to his effect of force. 

Jasper turned from the window, through which Snell 
was visible, and threw two or three sticks of wood on the 
andirons. The ranch-house, which was a Queen Anne 
cottage built by an Eastern architect under the super- 
vision *of Deed, but much influenced in its construction by 
Jasper's wishes, was set directly under the range of moun- 
tains that one saw from Maverick, and the rear windows 
looked out upon the pine-clad lower slopes of Mount 
Blanco. 

" Ah, Mr. Snell," he said, as he turned to greet him, 
" you're an early bird this morning. Take a seat. Noth- 
ing like an early morning ride to put life into a man, is 
there ? " 

" No — no," assented Mr. Snell, absently, as he took 
the seat, laid his hat carefully on the floor, and fumbled 
in his breast-pocket for a paper. 

" Well, I'm glad to see you letting up a bit on the 
daily grind. We all work too hard out here. A little too 
hasty about chasing up the almighty cart-wheel ; yes, a 
trifle too hurried. But it rolls, doesn't it, if you don't 
scramble after it with the rest ? " Jasper put his hand to 
the back of his head and smoothed his carefully brushed 
hair. " It rolls. That's my experience. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 227 

" ' It is not wealth, nor rank, nor state, 
But git up and git that makes men great.' 

Our Colorado maxim says it for us, and it's about so, I 
suppose. Eh, Mr. Snell ? " Jasper gathered his dressing- 
gown about him, and seated himself luxuriously in his fa- 
vourite chair before the fire, watching Snell warily from 
beneath his drooping lids, with every trading instinct in 
him alert under this rambling fire of amiability and world- 
ly wisdom. Snell was there to get an advantage over him 
in some shape ; he knew that as well as if he had carried 
a placard about his neck to advertise him of the fact. He 
gathered himself together with the secure consciousness 
that he knew whose the advantage would be when he 
bowed Snell out of his door. 

" Well, it ain't quite a holiday that Mr. Snell's taking 
this morning," admitted Mr. Snell, smacking his dry lips, 
as preliminary to business, and observing Jasper, whose 
eyes were on his watch-chain, with a curious look — a look 
instantly broadened to a smile at some subtle joke which, 
at the lifting of Jasper's head, he apparently saw in this. 
" I guess Mr. Snell hasn't taken a vacation from chasing 
up his own little mighty dollar yet, — not a very long one, 
anyhow, — and he don't seem extra likely to, while the 
present scarcity rules." 

" Are they scarce, Mr. Snell ? " asked Jasper. 

" Well, don't you find 'em so ? " 

Jasper hesitated a moment. " Why, to tell the truth, 
no, I don't. It takes all my time and some lively rustling 
to keep them plenty, of course. But I don't mind telling 
you, Mr. Snell, that I have a pretty good thing here — or 
my father and I have. With two or three open winters, 
like the last two we've had, we sha'n't be poor men. The 



228 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

increase is enormous, you know, if you don't lose all your 
cattle in the winter storms, and prices have been fairly 
good lately. I don't believe in the policy of running 
down your business, and playing poor all the time. I'm 
not poor myself, and I don't know that I care who 
knows it." 

" Why, that's good ! That's good ! " nodded Snell, and 
he let the gloating smile that had been working about 
the corners of his mouth go now, in sheer incapacity to 
contain his triumph longer. He longed to play his vic- 
tim further, but he had to say it. " That's the kind of 
news that warms the cockles of an owner's heart, ain't it ? 
Mr. Snell don't mind owning up, if you press him, that 
it warms his. He's been buying some cattle himself 
lately." 

" Indeed, Mr. Snell ! " said Jasper politely. "Whose?" 

"Yours," returned Snell. He locked his withered 
hands within each other, and leaned forward, resting his 
arms on his knees, and fixing his eyes on Jasper. 

Jasper straightened out of his lounging attitude in- 
voluntarily. His face paled. He found his smile and 
cigarette instantly, and rose to pick out an allumette on 
the mantel, with a low laugh of self- contempt, which 
Snell took for derision of his statement. 

" You don't believe it," said Snell to his back, with a 
gurgling note of contentment in his voice. " Well, I 
don't know as I expected you to," he drawled. " Mr. 
Snell said to himself, when he started out to pay this 
little morning call, that some of his remarks might re- 
quire substantiation — not necessarily for publication, but 
as a guarantee of good faith, as the ' Lone Creek Eustler ' 
says in its ' Notices to Correspondents.' Well, Mr. Deed, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 229 

I dare say I can substantiate. Might cast your eye over 
that," he said, coiling his tongue into his cheek to keep 
himself in subjection; "and that," he added, laying a 
second paper on the mantel, and still contriving to sub- 
due an importunate smile. 

Jasper stooped to the fire on the hearth and kindled 
his allumette deliberately before rejoining. He was flushed 
as he rose — perhaps with stooping — but he turned and 
faced Snell without haste or heat. 

" Who's your employer in this game, Snell ? " He 
rounded his lips and shaped a ring with the smoke, 
watching it climb to the ceiling with affectionate solici- 
tude. " Who are you acting for ? who's your principal ? 
which of my well-wishers put you up to this scheme ? " 
he repeated, as Snell did not answer. He looked down 
into Snell's bemused face, as he thrust his hands into the 
pockets of his dressing-gown, and puffed at his cigarette. 
" I swear, Snell, I gave you credit for more penetration 
than to waste your time for any one on a scheme that 
takes me for an unfledged tenderfoot. Do you think I'm 
here for my health ? " 

Snell had recovered himself, and said, with patient 
good humor : " No, Mr. Deed ; I never thought that ; 
your worst enemy wouldn't accuse you of that. There's 
good reading in them papers," he added, with the effect 
of an afterthought. 

" Entertain yourself with it, then," said Jasper, taking 
them from where they lay on the mantel, and tossing 
them to him. Snell caught them dexterously, without 
relaxing the smile which he no longer took pains to 
conceal, and which spread beamingly now to all his 
features. " I'm not in want of reading-matter here," 



230 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

continued Jasper ; " and if you've nothing more to say, 
Mr. Snell— " 

" Oh, I've got plenty more to say, if that's all," re- 
sponded Snell, imperturbably ; " and you'd like this read- 
ing. Hm-hm — ' This indenture — hm — this day — hm — 
party of the first part, and Abraham Snell, party of the 
second part, witnesseth : ' — would you like to know what 
it witnesseth ? " he inquired, opening wide the document 
he had been pretending to take stealthy peeps at while he 
read. He looked up at Jasper cunningly. 

Jasper scowled back darkly at him. " Oh, drop that 
leer, Snell ! What are you driving at ? " 

" Why, I've got a deed here of the ' Triangle Outfit ' — 
whole concern, you know," he said, looking up into Jas- 
per's paling face blandly; "house, land, fences, water 
privileges, run of the range, and one of the largest and 
finest bunches of cattle in the State; increasing enor- 
mously, I believe you said." 

" A deed of my range — of my cattle ! " repeated Jas- 
per. 

" Well," drawled Snell, with his habitual deprecating 
pull at his puckered lips, " not too all-firedly, teetotally 
yours. Some of it your father's, ain't it? — say about 
two thirds. / guess it's a good deed. Ought to be — 
deed from a Deed, you know." He leered up into Jas- 
per's miserable face, with a smile of enjoyment. 

" From my father ! Stuff ! " 

" Do you know his writing? " Snell began to open out 
the paper. Jasper snatched it from him. At sight of 
the signature he burst out in a great imprecation. He 
turned livid, and Snell got hastily on his feet, fearing 
that he would fall. But he left the fireplace quickly, and 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 231 

going over to the window read the whole document slowly 
through. 

" What devil's cunning did you use with my father to 
get him to sign this?" he asked, turning on Snell, as he 
finished. 

" Not any," responded Snell, cheerily. " I guess you 
used that for me, Mr. Deed, if all your father said was 
true. I'd have worked tooth and nail for a year to 'a' got 
that deed signed, just as it is there, I don't mind telling 
you, Mr. Deed, and been glad of the chance. But your 
father saved me the trouble. He came and offered me 
the bargain, he urged it on me, he crammed it down my 
throat; and after beating him down a trifle, just for self- 
respect, you know, I yielded politely. He was rather in a 
hurry, and I didn't want to bother him with a refusal — 
not at that price," he qualified, stroking his chin. " Ranges 
like this ain't going at $25,000 — well, not every day." 
He glanced at Jasper, and his eye dropped irresistibly in 
a wink. " 'Tain't no bad bargain," he went on, with a 
lapse into the cruder forms of his speech. " I don't mind 
owning up to that, now it's signed and sealed, and the 
outfit's mine." Snell did not miss the wince and the 
clench of the teeth with which Jasper received this. 
" But it wasn't the bargain I was after — not entirely." 
Jasper stared at him. " I suppose you've forgotten that 
little transaction of ours a year ago come next spring, 
Mr. Deed ? Yes ; I thought you would have. Well, you 
see I ain't. That's the difference. Oh, Mr. Snell's got a 
memory for kind deeds, ' Kind deeds can never, never 
die,' the old song says. We used to sing it in our Sunday- 
school back in the New Hampshire days. Don't know that 
sacred toon, perhaps ? But it's a good toon, all the same 



232 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

— a good, old-fashioned truth-telling toon. They can't 
die — kind deeds ; and if they could, I wouldn't let 'em. 
But I ain't had no trouble keeping this one alive; it's got 
up with me every morning, and made my breakfast happy 
for me ; and it's gone to bed with me every night, and 
helped me to put in a good night's rest. I ain't forgot, 
Mr. J. Deed, if you have," he said, rising, and nodding 
his head bitterly toward Jasper ; " and I've paid out a tidy 
sum for this here little dokyment " — snatching it from 
Jasper's loose clasp, and shaking it in his bony claws — 
" just to get it to help say so for me. I hope the language 
is plain, Mr. Deed." 

Jasper kept his hands from Snell's collar with diffi- 
culty. " Quite, Mr. Snell," he said, with his usual cool- 
ness. " You've paid $25,000 for a piece of paper that 
is worth, at the outside, twenty-five cents. That makes 
the expense of registering your disapproval of some- 
thing I've done, or left undone — I really don't recall 
the particular villainy you allude to — twenty-four thou- 
sand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and seventy- 
five cents. It's not a bad bargain, as Mr. Snell's bar- 
gains go." 

" What ! " screamed Snell. 

" I say your deed, as you call it, isn't worth the paper 
it's written on." 

" Oh, it ain't, ain't it ? " sneered Snell, comfortably. 

" No. My father had no more right to make that sale 
than you would have had." 

Snelled laughed cheerfully. " Think you're the only 
man who ain't here as a sanitary measure, do you ? I 
took a lawyer's advice before I closed with that poor father 
of yours that ain't got no rights. Pm not here for my 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 233 

health — not altogether. "When will you be ready to give 
me possession ? " 

" Never," returned Jasper, closing his lips. 

" Oh, come ! I'm willing to accommodate, but the 
date's too late. Make it a day or two earlier — say to- 
morrow." He flirted the deed carelessly about in his 
hand. 

" I'll tell you something I wonH postpone," said Jas- 
per, his fingers working by his side. 

" Yes ? " inquired Snell, with the irritating rising in- 
flection. 

"And that's putting you out of the house." Jasper 
began to roll up his sleeve. 

" Inhospitable, ain't you ? " said Snell, taking up his 
hat nonchalantly. " That ain't the way I'll treat you 
when I'm master here. Judge I'd better bring the sheriff 
with me when I come to take possession to-morrow," he 
said tentatively at the door. 

Jasper glared at him. Snell shut the door hastily. 
When he had gone, Jasper ran to his room, cast off his 
dressing-gown, and drew on his riding-boots. Vixen was 
ready for him when he came down-stairs, and he flung 
himself upon her. He dug his spurs into her. Snell was 
making his way back to Maverick by another road. 



XVI. 

Jaspee pushed Vixen across the five miles of level 
plain lying between the ranch and the mountains on the 
other side of the valley, with quirt and spur. It was an 



234 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

incomparable morning, but nothing in his mood answered 
to it. The stirring, potent, heady morning air swam 
richly through his blood, awakening him to a hotter anger 
and a deeper resolve. He drank its strength as he rode on. 
It made him strong for what he had to do. He set his 
teeth, and spurred forward, hammering his horse's flanks. 
The noises of the day's work were only beginning in the 
ranch-houses he passed on the road. The spacious, deep- 
lunged, awful quiet that settles at night over the big hills 
and the stupendous prairie reaches of the West had not 
lifted, and the mountains, black and still in the motion- 
less pines at their feet, and white and still about their 
snowy heads, looked down on the silence gravely. 

Jasper was not thinking of mountains. His imagina- 
tion, active enough within its own range of themes, was 
busy with a man who, up in the hills before him, would 
be just rising. The hills were not near enough. He 
cried upon the horse with an oath, as if Vixen could re- 
duce the distance visibly at the leap she gave under a cut 
from his quirt. 

At the " Snow Find " shaft a workman was busy low- 
ering the bucket. Jasper tethered his horse at the cabin 
door and strode over to him. " Pull up that bucket, will 
you? I want to see my brother." 

Mike Dougherty stared at him, and went on lowering. 
" Pull it up, do you hear ? " said Jasper, laying his hand 
roughly on the man's shoulder. 

" Yis, I hear," returned the man. With his arm he 
followed the revolving crank stolidly. The rope unwound. 

" You'll mind, if you know what's good for yourself." 

" Yis, I'll moind me owners. I takes me orders from 
Misther Cutter and Misther Dade, d'vez moind ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 235 

" I am Mr. Deed — Mr. Deed's brother." 

Mike shot a look at him as he stooped to his work. 
He may have found warrant for the statement in the re- 
semblance Jasper bore to Philip. "An' how would I 
know that ? " he said, reversing the crank, and fetching 
up the bucket, hand over hand, with the same delibera- 
tion. Jasper cursed him silently. " There yez are. 
Yez'll find Mis'ther Dade in the big drift to yer right 
at the bottom." Jasper got into the bucket, and 
Dougherty lowered away. "The second to the right, 
d' yez moind ? " 

Jasper had thought out his meeting with Philip as he 
rode. He had decided, if he did not find him at his 
cabin, to go down into the mine without asking for him. 
He preferred not to give him the opportunity of refusing 
to see him. 

He dropped past a stretch of pale-green earth out of 
the light. After the mellow stratum of brown he was in 
the dark, and all colours were alike. The firmament 
shrank above his head to a narrowing circle, the size of a 
man's palm. When he looked over the sides of his swing- 
ing, sinking bucket, the darkness deepened thickly into 
the abyss. He told himself that he was a fool to so put 
himself in Philip's power. But he could not stop now, 
and at the moment a pinhead of yellow flame danced in 
the depths, and he shouted at it. 

The man behind it caught the bucket as it settled on 
the floor of the mine, lifting his candle to peer into the 
visitor's face. All the morning shift was in the mine, and 
both the superintendents. Any one who came now was a 
stranger, and, in a productive mine, a stranger is likely to 
be held an enemy until he proves himself a friend. 



236 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Well ? " interrogated the figure in shadow behind 
the candle. 

" Is Mr. Deed here ? " asked Jasper, stepping out. 

" Yes ; but he don't allow no one in this here mine," 
returned Henry Wilson, formerly of Missouri. 

" He'll allow me. I'm his brother. I settled that at 
the top." As the man still scrutinized him, without of- 
fering to move, he said, " You don't think I lowered my- 
self down in the bucket, do you?" 

" /don't know what you did," growled the figure, which 
now showed a face, as the candle was lowered to the level 
of the head. 

" Well, I do, then. I satisfied the man on duty at the 
top before getting down. You can lay odds on that." 

" Yes," assented the man. The candle showed a smile 
in the recesses of his tawny beard. " I guess you wouldn't 
be let by Mike very slick without you halted and gave the 
countersign. Who did you say ? " 

" I sha'n't say it again. Come ! Get a move on ! " 

The man surveyed him again surlily, and, turning sud- 
denly away with his candle, left him in darkness. Jasper 
lighted a cigar, and sat down on the edge of the bucket. 
The man's stumping step died away in the lateral gallery 
into which he had turned. 

Two minutes passed without a sound. The air of the 
mine laid a clammy hand on him. He puffed vigorously 
at his cigar. The silence in the black space not lighted 
by the fitful glow of his cigar was like a thing in the dark- 
ness. Then he heard a quick step coming along the same 
gallery, a candle wavered into sight down the long passage 
into which he sat looking, and Philip stood above him. 
They gazed into each other's eyes. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 237 

u TouP 9 cried Philip? 

Jasper lifted his eyes lazily to the candle Philip held 
aloft, and smiled. " Yes," he said. He bit at the end of 
his cigar. " I want father's address." 

" I can't give it to you." 

" You mean you won't." 

" I said ' canHJ " returned Philip, thrusting the steel 
point of his candle-holder into a soft space in the wall, 
and advancing towards his brother with bent brows. " I 
don't know where my father is ; and let me tell you that 
you will do well to measure your words." He looked 
steadily into his eyes across the candle-glare. " This in- 
terview is not of my seeking." 

" Huh ! " uttered Jasper, meditatively. " Your man- 
ners have rather gone off since I met you last. The life 
of a mining camp seems to have been — relaxing." 

Philip bit his lip. " You should not be the first to say 
so," he said. 

Jasper laughed. "You haven't looked me up with 
your report of my mine," he said, with impudent percep- 
tion of Philip's meaning. " No, I understand ; it wasn't 
ready," he continued, lifting his hand deprecatingly at 
Philip's motion to reply. " I quite understand the delay : 
there was something else that wasn't ready. You weren't 
ready." A dangerous light kindled in Philip's eyes. "A 
man who has done a sneaking thing behind another man's 
back usually isn't ready, I've noticed, to face the man he's 
injured." 

Philip's hands twitched at his side. " Ingrate ! " he 
cried. " Keep those words to ticket yourself with ! " 

Jasper looked at him quietly from between his half- 
closed lids. " I'm talking of you" he said. " Bluff is a 



238 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

good dog — for tricks ; but I'm dealing with facts ; and I 
say that to rig a game on me with father in my absence 
was a dirty act. You can turn it back or front, or upside 
down," he went on with mounting anger, " but you can't 
get around that. It was a dirty act, and calling me names 
won't whitewash it." He came close to Philip, casting the 
words in his teeth. 

The creak of an ore-car on a distant track cut upon 
the silence that fell for the instant while Philip searched 
for words. The preposterous reversal of their positions 
dizzied him. For a second everything went round in a 
whirl, in the midst of which Jasper's adroit shifting of 
the question between them seemed to take on a demoniac 
physical body, and to go capering through the candle- 
flame, gibing at him. The right which he felt at the cen- 
tre of Jasper's accusation quelled him, and beat back one 
after another the answering words thronging to his lips. 
He clenched his fist and dropped it at his side. Every- 
thing in him called upon him to choke back the falsehood 
in his throat as it touched him ; but as his words touched 
his father, he owned sickly to himself their truth. The 
thought dashed him, and Jasper took the word before he 
could choose between one of the half-hearted answers that 
lay upon his tongue. 

" You thought I wouldn't see through this thing, — 
you and father, — did you ? You must have taken me for 
a bat. Why, you'd see through it yourself — yes, even you, 
my helpless, pottering brother, who don't know as much 
of business in a year as I could guess before breakfast any 
morning. Yes ; you who never turned an honest dollar in 
all your life, and who have managed to lose a pretty num- 
ber, even you would see through it. The thing's childish, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 239 

I tell you — hiring Snell to make a show of buying the 
range, and fixing things to take it over on your own ac- 
count and father's as soon as you've quieted me. There 
were just two leaks in that chivalric scheme, let me tell 
you : first, the idea that I wouldn't see the point of all this 
roundabout trick for doing me out of my range ; and sec- 
ond, that I would be quieted. I do see the point, and I 
won't be quieted. There's going to be a row about this 
thing before we're done with it, let me tell you. I should 
n't wonder if you heard the echo of it as far as the ' Snow 
Find,' " he sneered. " I'm just the sort of man to sit 
down and whistle at my fate, I am ! Huh ! " he grunted, 
for lack of all other expressions of his scorn, and turned 
away. 

" Do you find yourself safe in ahvays judging other 
men by yourself ? " asked Philip after a pause. 

Jasper stumbled, and Philip caught up his halting 
words. " You think you know me. You say I'm this and 
that. Answer me ! Am I the man to meet your low- 
downness with something lower ? Have I ever played the 
blackguard towards you ? You need an accusation, and it 
ought to be a first-class one, since it has to shelter you, 
and stand for answer to an act you know of. But it should 
be plausible, and you might begin by believing it yourself. 
Good God ! Do I look like a fellow who could stoop to 
your notions of what a man may let himself do ? Was I 
ever a sneak ? " 

Jasper clenched his hands. " Yes," he cried hoarsely 
— " yes. When were you ever anything else ? Your life 
has been one long slinking out of every sort of duty, re- 
sponsibility, and hard work. Your father has fed you 
since you were a man ; he has kept you in amusement, 
16 



240 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

and helped you in every fool scheme for dodging dis- 
agreeable things that your ingenuity could invent. 
You've gone on horseback from the first, young man. 
Do you think I haven't seen it? Do you suppose I 
haven't watched you while I was putting my back into 
my own work, and sweating to pull up this ranch you 
talk about ? " Philip had not mentioned it. " Sneak, 
do you say ? Why, if you were mousing about for a type 
of all the sneakingest things a man can do, you wouldn't 
have to go far. Fancy your demand that I should give 
up a share in this range to you, after what I've done for 
it ? You always had an eye for a soft snap ; but I swear 
you never had the courage before to put in a claim for 
such a soft snap as that." 

" Oh," cried Philip, " you should add that ! Don't 
leave your hellish ingratitude half baked ! Don't let me 
go free of your crime ! It is I who have dealt my father 
this coward's blow, then ? It's my act that's tortured and 
maddened him ? It's I who've sent him to fling away his 
fortune distractedly, so that he might stab me back with 
the loss of my share in it ? It's like you to be the inno- 
cent one, isn't it, and mighty like me to be in the wrong ? 
Was I ever anything else ? And it's I, too, — it must be, 
for if it's not, it's you, and that's impossible, — who begged 
his brother to stake out a claim for him in the mountains, 
and then got him without much bother (for you were 
always an easy-going fool about taking trouble for others, 
weren't you, Jasper?) to work the claim for him, along- 
side his own. Ah, yes," he cried, with a derisive shout 
that went echoing under the hewn roof above his head, 
and ran stormily among the galleries, " it would be I, 
would it not, who took such a service from my brother, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 241 

who left him to slave for a year for me in an ungodly 
hole among the hills, and paid him at the end with a 
coward's trick of fence that has its name among gentle- 
men ? Yes ; it would be I ! And it's you who have the 
burnt end of the stick in all this ; it's you who are basely 
wounded, and heaped with injury ; and it's you who come 
out of this thing with white hands ! It's a fine saying, — 
a monstrous fine saying — brother ! " 

Jasper slashed away with his cow-puncher's knife at a 
strip of iron pyrites in the rock at his side as Philip 
went on. At the last word he twisted the knife vio- 
lently, and brought away the glistening little stratum 
at which he had been quarrying. It dropped to the 
floor of the mine with a tiny note that was like a crash 
in the silence which fell as Philip ceased. Jasper paled 
to the eyes. 

" Words ! " he said, in his throat. " Words ! Better 
stick to them. Keep away from facts ! They hurt. 
Where is my father ? " 

" I have told you that I do not know," returned Philip 
in the tone of enforced patience which one uses towards a 
guest who has out-stayed his welcome. He folded his 
arms. 

" And I think I've said I don't believe you," answered 
Jasper. " If you hope to force me to a quarrel with you, 
by keeping me from the bigger game, let me tell you that 
you are badly off your base. I've got a juicy bone to pick 
with you later; you've given me matter enough this 
morning for all the quarrel you'll ever have any real need 
for, I fancy. But I choose my time for quarrels. This 
isn't my time for a quarrel with you. I'm not gunning 
for assistant sneaks to-day. I'm looking for the brains of 



242 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

this deviltry. Tell me where my father is, and when I've 
made him disgorge, I'll be ready to give you all the at- 
tention you can want." 

Philip fixed his eyes steadily on him above the 
candle. It began to gutter, and flared between the 
brothers. 

" D you ! " he said deliberately, between his teeth. 

" Keep your foul tongue from your father, or I'll teach 
you courtesy ! " 

" T-s-s-s ! " uttered Jasper. " An interesting person 
to teach courtesy ! Tell me," he cried, taking a stride 
forward, and in the baleful light that suddenly entered 
his eyes Philip guessed, as by a fatal inspiration, what he 
must say — " tell me," he repeated, " what did you say of 
me to Miss Maurice when I left you alone with her not 
many days ago ? What pleasant tales about me did you 
entertain her with ? Ah, my knightly brother ! You 
were asking if you were ever a sneak since I've known 
you. To abuse me to a woman in my absence with the 
mean hope of undermining my favour with her, and 
slinking into my place ! There's chivalry for you ! The 
chivalry of a confidence-man ; the courtesy of a back 
alley ! " 

With a single movement Philip whipped past the 
candle, and took him by the throat. " You hound ! " he 
cried. " Breathe Miss Maurice's name again, and I'll — 
You never had a decent thought. You are as incapable 
of understanding the movements of a gentleman's mind 
as if you had sprung from the gutter. Who taught you 
such thoughts ? Not your father, you — ! " 

" Take off your hands ! Take your hands off, I say ! " 
shouted Jasper. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 243 

" Must I be a cad because we are sons of one father — 
more shame ? Must I use my position to slander you to 
a woman because you would have done as much in my 
place? How should you guess that your father could 
wipe out your share in that cursed ranch in the pure 
generosity of his anger? It needs a man to understand 
certain things ! " Philip's voice was a sob. " You think 
it like him to turn a penny from his revenge, do you ? 
You can't understand his unreckoning love turned to 
unreckoning hate. You can't understand his ruining 
himself to even things with you, eh? Cur! Do you 
suppose he knows how to do a thing you could under- 
stand?" 

Jasper cast himself free, and fell upon his brother in 
blind rage. They clenched in silence, and swayed in each 
other's arms. 

" Curse you ! " muttered Jasper, as Philip forced him 
to his knees. He caught fiercely at him, and, rising sud- 
denly, by sheer strength, ground Philip back inch by 
inch, and, with an adroit twist, had all but thrown him. 
But Philip, winning a fresh grip, cast him back against 
the wall, where the candle leaped in a dying flame. Jas- 
per's head struck upon a point of rock. He fell heavily 
to the floor. They had gone crashing into the candle to- 
gether. It lay upon the floor, extinguished. 

In the darkness Philip stooped in horror, and thrust 
his hand under his brother's clothing, feeling for the 
beating of his heart. 



244 BENEFITS FORGOT. 



XVII. 

The minutes lengthened as lie crouched there in the 
stillness, dazed and shuddering. In the silence he heard 
the dull, regular stroke of a sledge upon a drill in the 
recesses of the mine. His eyes seemed bursting in the 
darkness as he strained them upon the still figure beneath 
his hands. The blackness began to pale. The daylight, 
streaming through the shaft, reasserted itself vaguely, 
and, with his eyes, Philip devoured the motionless form. 
Its outlines slowly discovered themselves in the sick un- 
certainty of the yellowing light. 

Steps drew near in one of the lateral galleries, and the 
gleam of a candle suddenly floated over the white face. 
Cutter laid a hand upon Philip's shoulder, and he looked 
up, turning a drawn visage on him. 

Cutter raised his candle, peering upon the prostrate 
figure ; and as Philip gave way to him, bent above it, and, 
after a moment's study, gave Philip his candle to hold, 
and put his ear to Jasper's heart. 

" Pshaw ! He's all right ! " cried Cutter in a cheerful 
tone, which shook Philip out of his labouring nightmare. 
" Come, let's have him in the bucket." 

Philip stooped without a word, and they carried him 
to the bucket, and, stepping in, gave the signal. As 
they rose, with their freight between them, Cutter 
caught out his handkerchief at sight of the wound on 
the head, from which the blood still flowed, and bound 
it up. 

They laid him on the grass in the wide sunshine at the 
top. Philip fetched water, and they dashed it in his face. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 245 

They loosened his collar, and plied him with brandy. He 
stirred. 

Philip, who had been bending over him, sprang np. 
" Here, take this," he mnttered hurriedly, pressing the 
flask into Cutter's hands. Mike came up with a telegram 
which had come from Gasher's, the small railway station 
a mile from the " Snow Find." Philip tore it open, and 
with a glance at it handed it over to Cutter. 

PiftoN, December 22d. 
The Ryan outfit have made a strike in the " Little 
Cipher." Assays $1,200 to the ton. You are a rich man. 
Come at once to protect your interests. Haffertcw. 

"By Jove!" shouted Cutter as he read. "Didn't I 
tell you ? " He rose in excitement. Jasper moaned un- 
easily. 

" No," said Philip. 

" Well, I told you the other thing. It's all the same." 

" You told me that the ' Pay Ore ' was a great mine 
and that the 'Little Cipher' was no good," returned 
Philip. His voice had a hollow sound. 

Cutter looked at him. " Well ? " explained he, im- 
patiently. And after a pause, " See here, will you take 
my advice ? " he asked, laying a compelling hand on Phil- 
ip's listless arm. 

"I don't know," returned Philip, out of the mazy 
seizure into which the despatch seemed to have plunged 
him. 

" You don't want to see this fellow when he comes to ? 
and you ought to be at Pinon by the first train that will 
take you there. Take his horse over by the cabin, and 
catch the 11:12. It's only twenty-five minutes past ten 



24:6 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

now, and you can make it on that horse of his with hard 
riding. I'll send Mike after you to fetch back the horse, 
so that it will be at the ranch when we get there." 

" When you get there ? " repeated Philip. 

"Yes, yes. Don't make objections, but start. The 
Eyans will have time to play the deuce with you if you 
don't start at once. I'll get Wilson to help me make up 
a bed for him in the Studebaker waggon, and I'll drive 
him over to the Triangle myself. I'll see him through. 
Don't bother ! And get on that horse ! " 

" Cutter," said Philip, in a tone of conviction, " you 
are a brick ! " 

He gave him his hand in a silent pressure, strode over 
to Vixen, flung himself on her back, and, with a wave of 
his hand to Cutter, disappeared below the brow of the 
hill on which the " Snow Find " buildings stood. 

Jasper opened his eyes. 

Philip saw the meeting hills within which Maverick 
lay part before the climbing progress of his train, and 
then close in behind it again, as they issued from the val- 
ley. The train writhed upon itself, crossing and recross- 
ing its track, snatching an advantage where it could, and 
winning its way from height to height by. breathless 
climbs, by level tugs in which the engine seemed to fill 
its lungs, by stealthy curves, by assaults. They stood at 
last where a mountain-side dropped sheer away below the 
rails, and, looking out from the dizzily clambering train, 
Philip saw beneath a white world, out of which the mel- 
ancholy firs lifted their wailing arms in scattered compa- 
nies. Ouray impended spectrally above the opposite win- 
dow for a moment, and then the train was at rest upon 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 247 

the summit, within the black hole which snow closes at 
all seasons. The scene was the same to Philip's heated 
sight within the tunnel and without : the monstrous bulks 
of the interfolded hills, the vision of a white, tumultuous 
wilderness, desolately broken by rocks and pines, ran upon 
his distracted sense like frost tracery, dissolving unintel- 
ligibly as it shaped itself. 

He was facing a new fact, with a thousand conse- 
quences, and watched the marching panorama as one 
watches a play in an unfamiliar tongue. He had known 
his fact only an hour, but a year's pain had gone into it, 
and a year's idle wrestling. 

The mine in which the Ryan outfit had struck a for- 
tune was Jasper's. 

As the train pulled out of the tunnel, and slipped 
down the first stretch of the descent on the other side of 
the mountains, Philip dreamed in rage of the day in which 
Jasper should take over with a silent smile the fortune he 
had won for him. It was the twist too much in this dev- 
ilish business, he cried to himself, in speechless bitterness, 
as he stared from the window again. The train swept into 
a snow-shed or burst out of one momently, and he took 
the white and glistening sweep of the wilderness upon his 
unseeing eyes in abrupt flashes. In the snow-sheds, where 
the other passengers could not see, he beat the arm of his 
seat in wrath. 

He could bear that Jasper should give him no thanks 
for the year he had divided between the two mines ; he 
could bear that he should cheat him of his inheritance ; 
and in the helpless tangle of fate in which that act had 
involved his father and himself, and even Margaret, he 
could bear to owe to Jasper the loss of his father's trust. 



248 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

He could suffer this and not attempt reprisal, lie could 
even feel how deeply, fatally wrong all reprisal must be ; 
but he could not heap a fortune on the man from whom 
he had borne all this. 

He frowned on McCormick, as he threw his leg over 
the pony he hired from him at Bayles's Park for the ride 
over the Pass. 

" Been gittin' bad news ? " asked the hotel proprietor. 
He had got the best of him in the bargain for the pony, 
and could afford to be sympathetic. 

" Heard of the strike up at Pinon ? " asked Philip, with 
an idle willingness to amuse his misery by what the man 
should say. 

" Don't mean the ' Little Cipher ' ? You ain't got 
nahthin' to do'th that, have you ? " 

"I leased it to the Eyan outfit a couple of months 
ago." 

" Why, shake ! " cried the hotel man, with honest 
pleasure. " You don't tell me ! They tell me it's a Jose- 
phus dandy. Moshier come down the other day on his 
way to Leadville, — you know Moshier, — and he said it was 
the biggest strike they've made at Pinon : the hull town's 
wild about it." Philip conquered the envious pang for 
which he began to despise himself. 

" How long ago did Moshier say they made the 
strike ? " he asked, to stifle his thoughts. 

"'Bout a week. Have you jist heard about it?" 
asked the man, interestedly. 

" Yes ; they weren't in a hurry to let me know." 

" No ; nachully," mused his interlocutor. " Did they 
tell you what it assayed? /heard $1,500." 

Philip found a smile. " The assayists get a little rat- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 249 

tied when somebody really strikes something, I've noticed. 
Trying to find pay ore in iron pyrites three hundred and 
sixty-four days in the year dulls a man." 

" Well, you take it easy," said McOormick, admiringly. 
He had spent a good part of his life on an Illinois farm, 
where things do not happen so often as they do in Colo- 
rado. " If any one was to have asked me before you spoke 
up about the ' Little Cipher ' bein' yours " — Philip winced 
— " I should have said you had been losin' a near relation 
'stid of strikin' it rich in a mine — somethin' a little near- 
er'n an uncle, and a little further than a father — 'bout a 
brother, say." McCormick laughed for enjoyment of his 
humour, but he changed the subject at Philip's scowl. 
" Say, what become of the pretty young lady and her 
father that you come through with a while ago, after the 
big storm ? " And at Philip's answer, " That's good," he 
said : " Glad to hear it. She was lookin' shaky. I was a 
little mite afraid she wouldn't pull through. It was a 
close call you had up round the Fifth Cascade, there. We 
ain't had such a storm since. Well, better luck this time ! 
We can't afford to lose you, you know. Come in and 
have something before you start," he urged, in the over- 
flow of his hospitality. 

Philip said it was too cold to get off his horse again, 
and offered him a nip from his flask, if he must pledge 
him. They drank together, McCormick praising the qual- 
ity of Philip's whiskey. " One more ? Well, I don't mind. 
Here's to the success of the ' Little Cipher ' and its owner." 

" No," said Philip. He laid a hand on McCormick's 
uplifted arm. " There are better toasts than that, McCor- 
mick. Drink to the poor devils who haven't struck it 
rich." 



250 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Oh, all right," returned McCormick, surprised. " To 
the poor devils who haven't struck it rich, then. That 
takes in me," he added, as he smacked his lips. 

Philip rode away and over the Pass with set teeth. 
Jasper would be even richer than he had fancied — 
brutally rich. It was the chance of mining : Jasper had 
won, and he had lost, and it was the kind of chance for 
which he could see himself being almost glad, under cer- 
tain conditions ; he could not imagine himself grudging a 
brother a fortune, if that were all. Very likely Jasper 
could do more with a fortune than he could ; he had 
never learned how to use money, or even how to keep it ; 
and at least there would be something to say for the wis- 
dom of the fate which should pick out Jasper rather than 
him for her money favours. But after all that had passed, 
to choose him as the instrument of her bounty was an 
odious freak. Contrived in this way, he did grudge the 
fortune to his brother, and grudged it to him savagely. 
He felt like howling in his rage to the canon walls, as he 
thought that it was for this he had spent that cursed 
year at Pifion. He thought of their fight in the mine. 
He thought of what he had said to Jasper, and now took 
none of it back, as he had begun to take it back when 
he stooped over him in the awful fear of what he had 
done. 

There was no snow in front of the cave near the Fifth 
Cascade when he reached it, though a heavy fall lay upon 
the hills towards which his face was set. The thought of 
Dorothy and of the days they had spent in the cave — days 
in which the friendly meeting of a common danger and 
the natural, candid, almost happy conditions of their 
situation had drawn them together— taught him a new 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 251 

pang. His heart laboured thickly with the sudden pain 
of the thought that she was lost to him. If he could still 
hope to restore himself to his place in her thought, — 
when he recalled how he had lost it through a sentiment 
of delicacy about Jasper, he loathed himself, — what sort 
of man was he now to propose marriage to any woman ? 

He said to himself, with a smile of irony, that he was 
in just the condition to tempt to marriage a woman whom 
he had given reason to distrust and dislike him ; and 
especially he was in a state which commends itself, every- 
where, to the careful fathers of lovely girls, and would be 
certain to commend itself to her money-loving father. 

Not to put too fine a point upon it, he was a beggar, 
and a beggar, now, without hope. He saw, now, how he 
had built upon the expectation that the Ryan outfit would 
strike it rich in the " Pay Ore " ; he went back and told 
himself that he should never have gone on seeing so 
much of Miss Maurice if he had not made sure of this in 
his own musings upon his future. His visible resources 
during the time when he was seeing Dorothy every day, 
and for a good part of every day, were contained in a 
leather trunk, the worse for mountain travel on pack- 
animals. But he had been rich in confidence. He smiled 
wearily as he remembered that he was always rich in that ; 
if at any moment of his life he could have realized the 
wealth that he saw in " futures," he would seldom have 
needed to wonder where he could borrow money to lend 
good fellows, or to buy a useless third pony. It was an 
instinct with Philip to want the third pony, and an irre- 
sistible instinct to buy it when he lacked money for a 
new hat. In moments like those he was enduring as he 
rode forward over the Pass towards Pinon he recognized 



252 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

these instincts for follies at least as cordially as his wisest 
friend could have wished. He even said to himself that it 
was cold-blooded to have borrowed that last money from 
Vertner for the purchase of Dan ; but he excused himself 
by recalling that he had expected the " Pay Ore " to do 
something for him then. And so had Vertner. Surely 
it wasn't to the " Little Cipher " that he had trusted in 
making the loan ! 

The thought was too bitter. He turned from it to 
wonder sarcastically if Jasper's luck would hold in the 
search he knew he would be making for his father as soon 
as he was able to be about again. It would be like the 
way things had been going since his father had struck 
back at Jasper, if he should find him, and revenge him- 
self as Jasper would know how to revenge himself. Ah, 
that was the mistake ! It was useless to regret it now T ; 
the thing was done. But what, of all that had happened 
since, was not the fruit of it ? It would have been a wise 
or a very hardy man who had ventured to foretell what 
shape the sure train of evil must take, when his father 
answered Jasper's blow with another ; but a child could 
have foreseen the inevitableness of the pursuing chastise- 
ment — of all this horrid, fertile coil of wrong begotten of 
wrong. Subtle, ingenious, pitiless — by what sureness of 
indirection, by what deadly certainty of straightforward 
vengeance, was the law which his father had outraged 
taking its satisfaction! Was it only nightmare? Did 
it not truly seem that the wrong which his father had 
dared try cure with wrong must go on helplessly begetting 
other wrong, after its kind, and in its own image ? Philip 
felt as if he were getting his Bible mixed ; but Nature 
seemed to have her own idea of the eye-for-an-eye doc- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 253 

trine — that was what he was thinking. She didn't 
spare. 

His thought rieochetted, in the aimless manner of 
thoughts, towards the ever-recurring theme of his debts. 
With his horse's head turned towards Pinon they became 
a subject of immediate, of even pressing, importance. 
What was he to say to those fellows ? He had staved off 
men to whom he owed money before ; but he had never 
made so many promises about any other set of debts, nor 
broken so many. The letters he had received lately from 
Pinon had made him writhe ; for it is a curious truth 
that reminders of debts contracted in carelessness about 
the means of meeting them are often felt to be more in- 
sulting than reminders of the same nature conveyed to 
conscious innocence, whose check-book is in its pocket. 
Philip hated the men to whom he owed money. They 
represented the difficulty of life. Worse — they stood for 
his weakness : they were his weakness in material form. 
From this point of view their mere existence was insulting. 

He chose to hold in his pony after passing Laughing 
Valley City. There was snow at this height, and he did 
not wish to press the animal. Besides, a plan of getting 
into Pinon after dark, and up to his old cabjn on Mineral 
Hill — a plan of investigating the find at the "Little 
Cipher," leaving Hafllerton in charge, if he was still there, 
and getting away again before the shopkeepers in the 
town below should have the opportunity of representing 
disagreeable facts to him — had been forming itself in his 
mind. 

In the event, Hafferton hailed him from the sidewalk 
as he rode into the town, and Philip had to alight and 
walk along with him, while he heard Hafferton's story. 



254 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

It was an interesting story ; and they were at HafTerton's 
cabin, and Philip had consented to stay the night with 
him, and allowed his horse to be stabled in the burro-shed 
behind the hut, before he knew. A party of four were 
playing cards in the cabin which Hafferton had shared 
with the editor of his old paper since he had returned to 
Pinon (his leased mine at Leadville had ceased to pay 
lately), and in the doubtful light cast by two candles set 
in two whiskey-bottles, Philip saw at once that one of the 
party was Charlie White — red-haired Charlie White, the 
newsdealer, whose bill he knew by heart. 

" How are you, Mordaunt ? " he said, giving a listless 
hand to the editor, who rose with his cards, and wrung 
his hand. 

" Lucky dog ! " said Mordaunt, in a hearty half- whis- 
per, which Philip felt was intended for congratulation. 
He half withdrew the hand which Mordaunt was crush- 
ing, and then let it lie. They all rose from the table and 
crowded about him, eager to snatch his hand. " Oh, 
come," cried Philip, as his bones crunched upon each 
other in the grasp of a hairy paw, " I can't interrupt the 
game." 

" Game be blowed ! " replied the owner of the paw, 
cheerily. " What's the latest from the ' Little Cipher ' ? 
That's a daisy strike of yours, Deed ! " 

They liked the coolness with which Philip took his 
good fortune. When they heard that he hadn't seen his 
mine yet, they formed themselves into a committee on the 
spot, to escort him to it in the morning. 

" Better hire the ' Silas E. Phinney ' brass-band," said 
Philip, sickly laying hold of the humorous view of the 
situation, and staying himself upon it, as the only perma- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 255 

nent object in this lurching welter, while he went on to 
chaff them. 

None of them knew. But of course. Had he not 
known that no one knew? Yes, yes; oh, no doubt. 
But he had not fancied them ignorant in this way. He 
had expected — Heaven knew what he had expected ! Or, 
yes — he remembered what he must have expected. He 
had understood vaguely that at Pinon they could not 
know the mine to be Jasper's — how should they ? They 
had never heard of Jasper. It was all in his own name : 
both mines had been known in Pinon as equally his — 
" Deed's mines." Philip Deed's mines. Yes ; he had 
said this to himself ; but never the other thing, that they 
must think the " Little Cipher " Ms. Was it too obvious, 
he wondered, now? Had he been crazed by Jasper's 
damnable good fortune? Well, w T hat matter? They 
thought the mine his. 

A black suggestion — the devil's — plucked at him as 
he stood among these fellows, giving back their congratu- 
lations with dazed looks and half-hearted raillery. It 
came upon him, suddenly, fatally, as if this too were a 
fresh thought. The thought was that Jasper knew no 
more than they. He knew that he owned a mine at 
Pinon. But which ? 

Philip turned pale, and tried to cry the truth at them. 
It would not utter itself. Then some one proposed a 
toast to the owner of the " Little Cipher," and when at 
last he lifted his voice to explain their mistake at any 
cost, it was drowned in the uproarious shout of congratu- 
lation. 

But Philip was determined, now. He waited until he 
could catch Charlie White away from the crowd, and, 
17 



256 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

drawing him into a corner, said, " That bill I owe 
you—" 

" Oh, that's all right, man ! You didn't think I was 
anyways worried about that, did you?" asked White, 
jovially. 

" Yes. You haven't left me at a loss to understand 
that you were worried." 

" Oh, my letters ! " cried Charlie, waving them off 
magnificently. " You surely haven't been taking them 
seriously ! What ? My little joking way ! Why, I thought 
you were too much of a joker yourself not to understand 
a bit of fun like that, Mr. Deed." 

" It isn't my idea of fun, Mr. White," retorted Philip, 
reckless of consequences with a man whom he might have 
to sue for indulgence the next minute. " I can't meet 
your bill in cash at the moment," he went on haughtily ; 
" but if you will allow me to return the set of Thackeray, 
and some of the other books in good bindings, — it's 
coming Christmas, and you'll have a sale for them, — I 
can make a small payment, on account, on the magazines 
and other things I owe you for." 

They spoke in an undertone ; but Philip felt that they 
were watched by the others, who went on drinking, leaving 
the new-made mining king to his royal whim. 

"Why, what the—?" began White; and Philip saw 
that he had humiliated himself for nothing. Then, as if 
taken with discretion, White went on : " Why, pshaw, 
man ! What's the use of talking ! Charlie White ain't 
the last man to understand how a fellow can be hard up 
with a leased mine when they've only just struck the dust. 
I don't want neither books nor payment. Not I ! Why, 
you must come down in the morning, after you've been 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 257 

up to your mine, and see what you want in our line. We 
won't stand on the question of credit. Five years and no 
questions asked is my motto with Mr. Deed." 

If Philip could have drawn a check for $69.17 then 
and there, and handed it over to him, he would have 
answered this as he was aware that it ought to be answered. 
The consciousness that he had less than $15 in cash in the 
world, and less than $10 in his trousers pockets, taught 
him to parley with the situation, as it had often taught 
him to parley with situations less vital. A wandering 
recollection came to him of something he had been 
hoping to be able to send Dorothy for Christmas — some- 
thing which he could get at Charlie White's, on credit, 
as he faced, for a moment, the opposite prospect of a suit. 
White wouldn't want his books, nor the small sum on 
account, if he knew the truth : he didn't need to glance 
at the hard lines under the smile he was wearing at the 
moment to understand this quite clearly. What he would 
do would be to sue him, now that he was within reach 
again, and to bring down the whole howling pack of his 
creditors on him. It would be an infernal row, and he 
would be spattered with a lot of mud. Why not postpone 
the question until he could look into the mine quietly, and 
take himself out of Pinon ? Then they were welcome to 
bay at his heels, if they liked : it might amuse them, and 
wouldn't hurt him. But to bring it on himself while he 
was here — The horror of the temptation came over him 
again, and to shut out the vision of the man that it sought 
to make him, he plunged into, " Don't rely on the mine, 
White, if you know what's good for yourself." 

"Why not?" asked White, sharply. "You haven't 
assigned your interest in it, have you?" 



258 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Philip saw what was in his mind ; he was imagining 
that he might have assigned his interest to avoid his cred- 
itors. He might better risk the truth than that ; if that 
idea got abroad to-night he might as well drop everything 
in the morning, and give himself up to his creditors. But 
he knew that the moment when he was likely to risk the 
truth was past, and in despair he said : 

"No; I haven't assigned it." 

It occurred to him that he would have to send his gift 
to Dorothy anonymously. 



XVIII. 



I please myself by thinking of Dorothy just at this 
time as the centre of all the young sentiment gathered 
about her. In the East, where we know that things are 
not what they were, a young girl is no longer likely to be 
called upon to choose among three lovers, a privilege 
which ought probably to be the inalienable right of every 
nice girl on both sides of the continental divide. But the 
eager army of adventurous spirits who populate the West, 
crossing the Mississippi at an age to which a nice girl 
seems much the nicest thing there is, are apt to find her 
the rarest product of the country, and to hold her in pro- 
portionate esteem. That one man should alone be in the 
secret of her niceness would, under Western conditions, 
be a painful extravagance ; and though the instinct of the 
West is not for economy, it is never, in this regard, other 
than frugal. By a fortunate provision of Nature the 
petty contest between the members of a group of young 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 259 

ranchmen or mining engineers, or the galliard lieutenants 
stationed at a frontier fort, cannot go on forever, else the 
nicest girl might finally lack niceness enough to go around. 
She usually mobilizes her straggling lines of amiability, 
and throws them upon a single knight, after a time, and 
if they hardily resolve to undertake the Western experi- 
ment together, she commonly finds, during the first year 
or two, that she needs all her niceness to keep the experi- 
ment going. Sometimes she returns to the East, and 
marries, in the end, some humdrum New-Yorker or Bos- 
tonian. In cases like this she leaves a reproachful sen- 
timent of regard behind her, which half a dozen agree- 
able young fellows may share without enmity until the 
next young girl comes from the East to divide their good 
will. And she often takes with her a romantic regret. 
She sees how the West — or at least these young Westerners 
— need her, or some one not too unlike her ; she pities 
their unfriended, unfeminized lot ; she thinks how, if she 
were braver, she should have courage to share it with 
them ; and after her humdrum marriage she has moments 
of despising the weak-heartedness which withheld her 
from sharing it with them. Fifth Avenue is a long way 
from the Rocky Mountains : through the mist of distance 
in miles and in years she finds it easy to imagine herself 
suffering the West for love of one Jack or Harry, — if she 
had only loved him enough, — and she keeps a perfumed 
corner of her memory for the real romance that clings 
about the whole great, rude, unspoiled country beyond the 
Mississippi — the romance which seized her young girl's 
fancy, even more than the battalion of young men, and 
which makes the unceasing and inexhaustible interest of 
the West. 



200 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Dorothy's heart and her conscience were sadly oc- 
cupied, as, with Jack by her side, she went her parish- 
visiting way some days following the encounter of the 
brothers at the " Snow Find." She had heard nothing of 
this as yet. Her trouble was an ill-starred instance of the 
imperfection of the frank and abundant Western love- 
making. Dick, whom she liked so much, Dick, who had 
been so generous and tireless a friend to her, in ways 
unknown to any friendliness but the very kindest, Dick, 
who had come to her rescue in one of the most difficult 
hours of her life, and had ever since been beyond all say- 
ing good to her and to her father — Dick wanted to marry 
her ! The fact, when it was fully explained to her, almost 
caused her to revolt against the whole institution of mar- 
riage. Why should Dick want to marry her ? Why could 
he not remain her dear, her very excellent, her never-to- 
be-enough praised or liked, friend ? Why must the tire- 
some question of love perpetually rise to haunt the fine 
and cheering and noble friendship which might bind men 
to women, if men were different ? 

She could not help grieving for Dick — poor Dick — but 
she would not allow herself to be sorry for the pleasant 
days which had led to this. It had been very pleasant to 
her, his friendship ; and if it was at an end (at least on 
the old, kindly, unconscious ground), it was not her fault, 
but her great misfortune. She could not see, as girls 
often see remorsefully, in such cases, with no better rea- 
son, how she had been to blame. Was she to have im- 
agined, then, that Dick was in love with her ? She said 
to herself indignantly that no such discreditable and 
vexatious thought about Dick could ever have entered 
her head. But as the full meaning of Dick's passion for 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 261 

her made its way into her consciousness, her heart bled 
for him, in perceiving how just this frame of mind, on her 
part, must lend poignancy to his regret. That she found 
him impossible and incredible as a lover was not a thing 
to console his lonely sorrow at Laughing Valley City. It 
was to Laughing Valley that he had returned the day 
before, with a gentle air of asking forgiveness for having 
spoiled their relation, which went to her heart. 

" Ah, well," she said to herself, as she caught sight of 
Vertner coming towards her down a side street. " He will 
find some good girl after a while who will see how splen- 
did he is, as I do, and will love him besides. The worst 
is, we never can be friends again ! " 

Vertner, as he joined her at the corner, asked if he 
might walk along with her, and then inquired where she 
was going. Dorothy said she was going on a round of 
duty-calls, but that she was glad to see him ; she wanted 
to ask him about his plan for enlisting her father in the 
publication of a church paper. She spoke anxiously, and 
Vertner had his unfailing cheerfulness ready for her. 

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "It's a wonderful 
field. It's curious some clever chap hasn't worked it 
before." He was distributing his happy, indomitable little 
smile, as they walked, to every one they met. Dorothy, 
who had come to know a great many people in Maverick 
herself, by this time, was surprised and amused by the 
extent of his bowing acquaintance. She said he seemed 
very neighbourly, and Vertner laughed. Oh, yes, he 
owned; a man had to know everybody. There was no 
telling what business he would be wanting to go into one 
of these beautiful Colorado days ; and perhaps from a 
willingness to avoid plumbing the depths of his church- 



262 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

paper scheme with her, he called upon her to admire the 
unwearying and systematic goodness of the Colorado 
weather, and insisted upon the admission that there was 
no place in the world for a man to settle in like Mav- 
erick. " I used to think Leadville was about right," he 
said, with a smile, which admitted her into his professional 
insincerity, " but that was when I owned more corner lots 
in Leadville than I do now." 

" No ; but about the paper — " began Dorothy, again. 

And, as if it had slipped his mind, " Oh, yes ; about 
the paper ! " he exclaimed— and changed the subject. 

Dorothy had intended to make her first call on Miss 
Kiteva Snell ; but perceiving that Yertner hoped that she 
would be obliged to leave him before they had definitely 
arrived at the subject of the paper, she changed her 
course, determining to begin with Mrs. Felton, who lived 
much farther out, not far from the river road. 

" Why, you see it's this way," said Vertner, when he 
found that he must make a virtue of necessity. " There's 
no diocesan paper, and your father and I thought it would 
be a good thing to start one." Dorothy laughed boldly at 
Vertner's use of the word " diocesan " ; if she had not been 
much concerned about her father's share in the paper, she 
would have taken time to be amused by the idea of Vert- 
ner as the publisher of a church journal, a function which 
he presently explained that he was to assume, if her father 
decided to go into the enterprise, and would accept the 
post of editor. 

It appeared that this was to be a weekly — "a little 
weekly for a cent," Yertner called it ; it was really to be 
very small, but was to be sold at rather less than a cent, in 
quantities, to the various congregations of the diocese. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 263 

" We'll take in New Mexico and Wyoming after a while ; 
but we thought of beginning with Colorado," said Vert- 
ner, modestly. " In these missionary dioceses, you know," 
— Dorothy could not help admiring the glibness with 
which he used his second-hand knowledge procured, she 
felt sure, from her father, — " they haven't got around to 
the little diocesan papers that are so common in the East. 
But all dioceses need them. They are popular with the 
bishops because they afford a channel for direct communi- 
cation with all the people of their dioceses — appointments, 
pastoral letters, and all that, you know ; they are popular 
with the priests " (Dorothy wished not to be irreverent, 
but she was forced to smile at Vertner's confident use of 
her father's high-church word) " because we print a special 
edition for each church, with local announcements ; and 
the people like them because they get them for nothing." 

" For nothing ? " inquired Dorothy, not understanding 
how her father was to profit by such an arrangement. 

" Well, the same thing. They feel as if they got them 
for nothing. Of course each church will subscribe as a 
body, but the papers will be distributed every Sunday in 
the pews free. Every church will subscribe. We sha'n't 
stick them very much for the paper by the hundred." 

" But how do you expect to make your fortune, Mr. 
Vertner, by that plan — and. papa's ? I suppose you in- 
tend to make your fortune ? " she answered, with twink- 
ling eyes. 

Vertner smote his hands together with delight. He 
was wearing a pair of sealskin gloves, and the concussion 
made a resounding noise. " Yes, yes," he cried, gener- 
ously enjoying his foible with her. " Of course. What 
are we here for ? " 



264: BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" For your health, Mr. Vertner ? " suggested Dorothy, 
roguishly, under her breath. 

Vertner smiled with her. " I'm afraid it wouldn't do 
to trust you with our scheme for making a go of this 
thing," he said, looking at her with admiration. " You 
might understand it." 

" Thanks." 

" It's a good scheme," he said fondly. " Do you think 
I could trust you ? " 

" To misunderstand it ? " 

" No ; not to go and give it away to the big adver- 
tisers." They laughed together at this, and Vertner said 
he thought he could rely on her friendliness to her 
father to keep her from indiscreet revelations, and ex- 
plained how they— he always implicated her father, 
Dorothy observed, with interest — were going to charge 
for advertising only in proportion to the circulation, and 
were going to charge only a cent a line per thousand of 
circulation, at that. 

" But that is worse and worse," cried Dorothy. " I 
don't see but you are sure to lose money. You are taking 
every precaution." 

" Urn ! " meditated Vertner, with a cheerful smile. 
" Strikes you that way, does it ? Well, it does 'most every 
one, to tell the truth. I've mentioned the idea to half a 
dozen men in Denver who do a good deal of advertising, 
and that's what they said. They asked me if I couldn't 
corner enough annual ruin in mines without monkeying 
with church newspapers, at a cent a line, and prove your 
circulation by monthly affidavits? I had to do a little 
fright at that, of course, as if that view of the case hadn't 
occurred to me. Your intuition, Miss Maurice," he said, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 265 

making her a flattering bow, " taken in connection with 
their business judgment, makes me feel happy about the 
scheme. So you think your father and I would drop our 
molasses-jug if we went into the ' Church Kalendar ' on 
that basis?" 

" No, Mr. Yertner," returned Dorothy, with an unper- 
turbed face, which Yertner resisted an inclination to ap- 
plaud ; " if you say there is a fortune in it, I shall get 
myself a new pair of gloves to-day. I'm sure you always 
know when you are going to make a fortune." 

" Ah, that makes two persons who believe in me ! " ex- 
claimed Yertner. " The other is a man in Denver who 
dropped to my scheme. He fell off a ten-story building 
on it. It was glorious. I chummed with him for an hour 
like a brother, and swore him to secrecy." 

" Oh, please chum with me like a sister, Mr. Yertner ! " 

" Shall I ? Well, the man said it was too pretty a 
scheme to give away. I believe you'll have the same feel- 
ing," he said, with a reverence which he failed in bur- 
lesquing. " You see—" 

He hesitated. 

"Well?" 

" Well, we don't make any guarantees about the circu- 
lation. It may be small or it may be — large." He paused 
for the eifect. 

" But — " began Dorothy, not finding herself more en- 
lightened. 

" Well, we make them take out a yearly contract in 
consideration of the lowness of the price." 

" But still I don't see," cried Dorothy. 

" Don't you ? How many subscribers do you think we 
shall have at the end of six months ? " 



266 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" I don't know," returned Dorothy, laughing. " Five 
thousand ? " 

" What ! Five cents a line ! Do you want to starve 
us ? The circulation at the end of the first half year will 
be a quarter of a million. How many churches do you 
suppose there are in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, 
Arizona, Montana, Dakota, Washington, Oregon, Cali- 
fornia, and Nevada ? " He rolled off the portentous list 
with enjoyment. Dorothy again replied that she did not 
know. "Well, neither do I," owned Vertner; "but there 
must be a quarter of a million regular attendants at those 
churches at a low calculation. Now do you see ? " 

Dorothy laughed aloud. " And are you going to make 
every one of those people subscribe to the ' Church Kal- 
endar ' ? " she asked. 

" I'm going to give it to them," replied Vertner. And 
at Dorothy's look of bewilderment, " On a dona-fide sub- 
scription plan, of course. We'll arrange that with the 
rectors. But you see the point, perhaps ? " 

" With the advertisers ? " faltered Dorothy. 

Vertner nodded happily. 

" But will they— will they like it ? " asked Dorothy. 

" Well, I don't believe they will renew their contracts 
for the second year," admitted Vertner, sententiously. 

Dorothy did not instantly see her way through the 
sinuosities of this ingenious plan ; but she thought she 
was sure that there was a lurking wrong to somebody in- 
volved in it. She reserved this for her father, however. 
She meant to ask him all about it, and to beg him, what- 
ever the honesty, and whatever the promise of the enter- 
prise, not to share in it. She doubted all projects of 
making money, 'prima facie. She had not merely a worn- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 267 

an's conservatism about finance, she had the timidity of 
all who live on a stated income, and to this she added a 
rooted distrust of her father's financial capacity. It was 
the only distrust she allowed herself regarding him, and 
even this was affectionate : how should such a man be 
skilled in the ways of trade ? 

She formed a project of asking Jasper to advise him 
not to engage in the plan. She knew that her father re- 
spected Jasper's judgment, and perhaps he would suffer 
himself to be persuaded by him on the business side, when 
her own remonstrances would not avail. Jasper and her 
father had been even more intimate since the renewal of 
their acquaintance in Maverick than she remembered 
them in the eld days. Jasper had once come and sat out 
the evening with her father in his study, smoking a pipe, 
only looking in on her to say " Good-night." Possibly 
Jasper would go into it with him ; that would make it 
safe, for she was sure that any business project of which 
Jasper approved, and to which he gave his mind, must 
prosper. But she was in a moment not sure that she 
wished this. She would not say to herself all that this 
thought implied. She had begun to shrink lately from 
her previsions of the final outcome of her present singular 
relation to Jasper. She had said to herself that she must 
bring the matter to an end, but she had not yet found the 
hardihood for that, and meanwhile she felt herself being 
surrounded ; she had the sense of being softened and 
drawn to him by a slow, certain process, like the fatal eat- 
ing of the sea into a rock. Jasper's will was in itself a 
reason for anything that he strongly wished ; through all 
the strength of her own will she felt this. Sometimes she 
felt it unsupportably, and it was at such times that she 



268 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

said to herself that she must end it. Alas ! it is really 
only the man who can put an end to such a situation. A 
woman can make her way out of it only by a violence, an 
unwomanliness. From all that could be held unwomanly 
Dorothy shrunk with much more reluctance than from 
anything that the situation into which Jasper had con- 
trived to bring her could have to offer ; and she helplessly 
let the affair lapse and drift. 

Thinking of Jasper led her to speak of him ; and 
Vertner's extraordinary interest in the subject was caus- 
ing her a vague wonder, when they met Dr. Ernfield, 
driving back to Maverick from a professional visit which 
he had been paying at Loredano. He drew up to the side- 
walk, and they paused to speak to him. Dorothy thought 
sadly that he was looking very weak and ill again. Doro- 
thy had last seen him at Beatrice's card-party, where he 
was looking much stronger than now ; and she was grieved 
by his appearance of illness. She begged him to come to 
see her ; she said she was in shockingly good health, but 
she would come down with any new and unstudied dis- 
ease that he liked, if he would not come without that. 
But she hoped he would. 

Ernfield said he should be glad to come without ex- 
cuse, if she would let him. He had often seen Dorothy 
at Mrs. Vertner's while Margaret was in Maverick, and 
twice since Margaret had gone he had been to the Mau- 
rices' cottage, — once to see Maurice himself, when he had 
been suffering from a bad cold, and once again to call 
on them, with no business reason. Dorothy's cordial free- 
dom, her sweetness, and the candid openness with which 
she lavished herself on him when he came, were not 
things which any one could fail to like, and certainly were 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 269 

not things which a man in his position could be other 
than grateful for. When he had last seen her he had 
scorned himself for the stealthy pain which ventured to 
show its head at the thought that it was only to a man 
out of the running that a woman could venture to be as 
good as that, and he was willing to go again to punish 
himself for the thought by enjoying her kindness as 
whole-heartedly as it was offered. Surely, in so far as 
any one could imply by words said, and left unsaid, that 
he was a robust marcher in the ranks with the rest, with 
a brave, rich life before him, she implied it, with her 
woman's tact. It was himself he must accuse ; and he 
did it handsomely, as Dorothy, with the yearning painted 
on her face, in spite of herself, to do something for him, 
somehow to give him a lift, to cheer and comfort him, 
begged him to come to see her. 

Vertner asked the news at Loredano. How was the 
strike Pope had made in the " Nugget " coming on ? 
And had Metuchen driven his bunch of cattle over into 
Bayles's Park for the winter? It was part of the kindli- 
ness and inbred courtesy, which oddly mingled themselves 
with other qualities in Vertner, that he forbore to follow 
Dorothy's suggestion with one of his hearty invitations to 
" look in on a fellow, once in a while, won't you ? " He 
did not care anything about Pope's mine or Metuchen's 
cattle, but he felt the obligation to bridge the gap. Ern- 
field did not want to be asked to that house of painful 
reminders, he knew ; and he didn't want to be reminded 
that anybody was taking care not to remind him. 

Ernfield, after a word of inquiry about Dorothy's 
church work, which had always seemed to interest him, 
drove on, turning back to say that he had met Mrs. Vert- 



270 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ner coming out of Mrs. McDermott's house, on the river 
road : they would meet her if they went on. Fred Kelf- 
ner, who occupied his usual seat beside the doctor, lifted 
his hat to Dorothy as Ernfield whipped up his horse. 

They were out of town now, and walking towards the 
mountains against the brisk wind which often blows at 
these altitudes. Ouray was behind them, but on their 
right the long serrated rib of the Sangre de Cristo range 
cut the fiery welter of the western sky. The range hung 
a curtain before the setting sun, which went on shining 
behind it. Over the white flanks of the sweep of hills 
walling the other side of the valley there began presently 
to spread a tender, subtle, infinitely delicate glow, like a 
maiden's blush, which is and is not. 

Vertner talked gaily on, in the wind; but the still 
peace and beauty in which the hills lay about her, and 
a flying rack of thoughts within her mind, kept Dorothy 
quiet. She began to wish that she had not set out to 
make a round of visits : she had come out to escape, if she 
could, from her miserable thoughts about Dick ; but she 
had not lost them, and this new trouble about her father, 
about Jasper, seemed to connect itself with the other, and 
to agglutinate the whole into that single mass of vexation 
which will sometimes cloud over a day or an hour for the 
lightest-hearted. 

She would have turned back, but she bethought her- 
self of Mrs. F el ton, for whom she had set out, and who, 
she knew, was battling with a misery of her own, which 
her visit might lighten momently, perhaps. She did not 
say to herself that to solace Mrs. Felton's homesickness 
might be a roundabout way of helping herself to climb a 
little out of her own depths; though she knew well 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 271 

enough that the only real happiness lay, and must always 
lie, in bringing happiness to others. 

Mrs. Eelton had lately come to Maverick from Phila- 
delphia as a bride, having married a capital young fellow, 
originally from the same city. He had founded a pros- 
perous real-estate and insurance business in Maverick 
within the year, and had lately been encouraged by his 
success to return to the East long enough to marry the 
faithful and charming girl who had waited four years for 
him. She was just passing through the first homesick 
time in which young wives, fresh from certain traditions 
of the East, sit in puzzled and miserable helplessness be- 
fore the conditions of Western life. Mrs. Eelton felt that 
the desolation, the strangeness, the hideousness, of her 
first month in Maverick — the month which she had 
looked forward to as the happiest of her life — had left a 
permanent mark on her. She wondered whether they 
would see it in her eyes at home when she went back. 
But she was determined that they never should. They 
had told her that it would be something like this, not 
guessing, in their ignorance, a thousandth part of the fact, 
but prophesying in the cheerful manner of kinsfolk before 
one's marriage. They should never know how she realized 
their prophecies. 

She planned to confide the truth to Jessie Kidder, 
who was betrothed to a young man who had just left 
Harvard, and had gone to Dakota to start a horse ranch ; 
she planned to warn her under the seal of confidence. It 
was wrong to let a young girl venture upon such a 
future blindly. Jessie would be dazed and troubled by 
what she would say to her ; but she heard her answering 
that she didn't care, that she was not marrying to live in 
18 



272 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

this place or that, but for love of her husband, who would 
be sufficient for her anywhere. And then Mollie Eelton 
saw how she must tell her that that too was a mistake : 
that what she said was true enough, in a way, and more 
than true enough. She herself had never been so happy. 
No. But, then, she had never been so unhappy. She 
perceived that it would be useless ; but if she ever got 
home again — she no longer really believed that they would 
ever be free to retraverse all those dreary miles of rail — 
she should tell her. It was a duty. 

Mrs. Eelton was of course not very well seen in Mav- 
erick. She was thought too Eastern, too exclusive. She 
had an honest hatred of gossip, and, in other ways, had 
not proved as " adaptable " as some of the ladies could 
desire. It was reported that she had once said that she 
did not think herself better than her butcher, but differ- 
ent. And opinions like this separated her from such 
society as there was in Maverick, and had helped to make 
her first month difficult. 

Dorothy understood her trouble exactly : when she 
had first come to the West she herself had passed through 
a time not very unlike Mrs. Eelton's. Even in the midst 
of her week or two of homesickness, however, she had 
been able to see it, partly, as the joke it was ; and when 
she was better of it, the humour of the whole Western 
situation had soon so penetrated her, that she remembered 
her first feeling about the West, now, only as a sentiment 
which she could call up, at need, to assist her sympathy 
for another in like case. She did not pretend to delight 
in the West, now, as Kiteva Snell did ; but she was busy, 
she was absorbed in making the West bearable to her 
father, who hated it ; she was up to her eyes in the busi- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 273 

ness of tempering the situation to him, in the enterprise 
of making him happy, and for herself she had ceased to 
care very definitely. One was happy anywhere where one 
had an absorbing occupation ; and it was this wisdom 
that she was presently preaching to Mrs. Felton, when 
she had left Yertner with Beatrice, whom they met near 
Mrs. Felton's house. 

Mrs. Felton had often accompanied them on their 
rides lately, and Dorothy pretended that it was to invite 
her to join Beatrice and Ernfield and herself in a ride on 
the morrow that she had called. 

Mrs. Felton was not like the pretty little Jewess upon 
whom Dorothy called next, unhappy because she " did so 
miss the matinees." Mrs. Felton's homesickness, if pas- 
sionate, was not fantastic. Dorothy did not ask Mrs. 
Stern, (who, for an occult reason of the sort that no one 
thought of questioning in Maverick, chose to go to 
Maurice's church) why she did not complain of indigesti- 
bility of the clay in Lone Creek Valley ; but a number of 
impossible questions were on her lips. 

At Kiteva Snell's the atmosphere was amusingly dif- 
ferent. The Snells, of whom Kiteva was most in evi- 
dence socially, were very happy about themselves and the 
West. Miss Kitty, in particular, would hear nothing 
against any State west of the Mississippi, and she kept 
alive a fine enthusiasm about Maverick and its future 
which had the fire and the taking largeness of a senti- 
ment of patriotism. She had not seen New York, and 
did not care to ; but she knew and loved the Omaha of 
her birth, though she could seldom be persuaded to go so 
far East, when her father would go on his pass. She was 
glad to remember that even her name was Western, for 



274 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

she had been christened Kiteva in honour of a summer 
resort for the people of Chicago that her father had been 
engaged in booming at the time of her birth. It was a 
regrettable fact that the books she wanted to read were, 
for the most part, published in New York or Boston, and 
she could balance this misfortune only by ordering them 
through the local newsdealer (there was not a bookseller 
in Maverick), in order that " the money," as the Western 
phrase is, " might not go out of the town." It happened 
also that the centre of her present intellectual life had its 
physical habitation on the shores of a New York lake ; 
but she tried not to remember that the advantages of the 
" Chautauqua Literary Association " were derived from 
Jamestown. 

Kiteva had acquired her fondness for reading at a 
Toledo boarding-school, where one could acquire a glossy 
coat of culture in three years, with diligence. Kiteva had 
used the diligence, and when Dorothy first knew her, she 
was in the early maturity of the habit of exactitude and 
impeccability, which are the very things for general con- 
versation. Her a in " squalor " was quite, quite long, and 
she pronounced her "Asia" between her teeth, with the 
alluring sibilant effect — Acia. She accented her "le-gis'- 
lative" on the second syllable, and could pronounce a 
great many words just as they are in the dictionary, with- 
out smiling. Nothing, though, was so nice in her con- 
versation as her elegant habit of bridling the shambling 
looseness of our common speech in colloquial phrases, 
like "couldn't you," which she prettily replaced with 
" could not you," and the sloven " a- tall," to which she 
restored its printed aspect, so that " at all," with a proper 
fence between, lived again. Pier favourite books of refer- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 275 

ence were " The Orthoepist," " A Thousand Words often 
Mispronounced," and " The Verbalist." Hervademecum, 
however, was "Don't," and it is fair to say that Miss 
Snell didn't. 

Kiteva did not talk of the things of the mind, as she 
called them, with Dorothy ; she talked of Jasper — a little 
persistently, Dorothy thought. She had heard that he 
had returned, and had seen him ride by from her window, 
but had not yet met him face to face since his return. 
How was he looking ? Had he enjoyed his visit to New 
York? He seemed very fond of the ranch and of his 
work there. He had done wonders with it. She quoted 
sayings of Jasper ; she rehearsed incidents of the time be- 
fore Dorothy came to Maverick. She gave the impression 
of having known Jasper very well. Dorothy wondered 
if this was the kind of young lady with whom he occupied 
his leisure when she was not near. 

She left Kiteva a little abruptly at last, and took her 
way back to her own end of the town with a vague feel- 
ing of weariness tightening about her heart. Too many 
things had happened to-day ; there was too much to think 
of. Her head went round in a whirl. 

She entered her own home with Jack, at last, on the 
verge of tears. The day and the world seemed to have 
gone hopelessly wrong. Her father, who had learned to 
interpret the signs of suppressed emotion in her, patted 
her hand quietly as, with her hat and jacket still on, she 
took her accustomed seat in his study, on the arm of his 
big leather chair. 

" Well, little girl, what is it ? " he asked, laying 
down the volume of G-uy de Maupassant he had been 
reading. 



276 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Oh, I don't know, father. I don't know. I wish 
you wouldn't go into this paper of Mr. Vertner's," she 
said abruptly. 

" But, my dear young woman — " He smiled vaguely 
at her. 

" He told me all about it this afternoon. I don't be- 
lieve," she told him, stroking his beard as she bent over 
him, " that you know as much about the ' Church Kalen- 
dar ' as I do, papa. Ask Mr. Yertner about his advertis- 
ing, and his — his ' scheme,' as he calls it. It isn't nice. 
It is just like you, papa, not to have looked into the de- 
tails of it, at all ; and to have accepted the idea because 
Mr. Virtner says it is a good one." 

" Pshaw ! pshaw ! There's nothing wrong with the 
idea, child. What do you know of papers, Dorothy ? " 
He got up and went over to the upright piano which filled 
a corner of the study. 

This room, in which Maurice wrote his sermons and 
played on his piano, was the largest in the house, and 
occupied the whole front of the second story. Dorothy 
never interrupted him here in the mornings, when the 
superstition was that he was hammering out his sermons ; 
but she often spent the evenings with him in its smoke- 
laden atmosphere. Sermon-writing, with Maurice, re- 
quired the consumption of a number of Havana cigars, 
and was accompanied by a good deal of Sullivan and Of- 
fenbach on the piano. Dorothy would hear him playing 
and singing snatches of comic opera in the mornings for 
half an hour ; then the piano would suddenly go silent, 
and, from below, she would hear him pacing the floor. 
Then this sound, too, would cease, and she would know 
that he was at work, until the piano burst out again. In 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 277 

the moments of silence he was as often reading as writing ; 
but this would have counted as work, too, with Dorothy, 
if she had known it. She had a little pride of her own in 
his learning. Maurice's smattering of a number of sub- 
jects was far from that, but he was by nature a bookish 
man : he read the poets, whom he was fond of quoting in 
his sermons ; he had once relinquished the thought of a 
book on the old dramatists; he had a pretty taste for 
Barrow, whose sturdiness and solidity attracted him by 
the law of the attraction of opposites, perhaps ; he ram- 
bled through him from time to time, pencilling his winged 
adjectives ; and regularly, once a year, he read Thackeray 
from start to finish. His contemporary reading was, for 
the most part, French ; of the older writers he liked 
Dumas, whose " Trois Mousquetaires " he read at all sea- 
sons ; he was a subscriber to the " Revue des Deux Mondes " 
and the " Saturday Review," and he loathed the present 
school of American fiction. He said it lacked — but we 
know what it lacks. " Come and sing," he said, as he 
took his seat on the piano-stool. 

Dorothy, who had taken up her knitting, shook her 
head. She seated herself in the chair he had left, and, 
lost to his sight in its depths, she stared into the fire 
through the tears of overwrought emotion which stole out 
upon her eyelids, and coursed silently down her cheeks. 
Her father, after a dreamy prelude, had rattled into the 
" Entrance March " from the " Mikado." 

"DidVertner say how he was getting along?" he 
asked, pausing in the middle of the march. 

" No," Dorothy managed to reply in a muffled voice. 

" I should like to get out the first number in January," 
he said meditatively. He whistled a bar or two of another 



278 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

air from the same opera thoughtfully over to himself, and 
turned to the piano to finish it. 

" Papa ! " she said, loud enough to be heard above the 
music. He rose and came over to her. 

" What ! crying ? " he exclaimed. " But this won't do 
at all." He drew up a chair beside her, and took her 
hand. " Why, girlie, there's nothing in this — nothing." 
He regarded her tenderly, as he stroked her hand. He 
let her sacrifice herself to him from habit, he postponed 
her to many things ; but he loved her. One saw it in his 
glance even when it rested on her casually ; no one could 
have seen him at the moment without feeling sure of it. 
" I won't enter into it at all if you take it so hard. But 
you've been accepting some of Vertner's joking literally. 
You must allow for his way of looking at things. Why, 
I don't believe he would care for this paper idea at all if 
he didn't see a joke in it." 

" Yes, papa," rejoined Dorothy, starting up in her 
chair ; " that's it. It's a joke, a practical joke ; but it 
isn't — it isn't quite what you would call a fair one, I think, 
papa, if you understood it. Do look into it before you 
give your word to Mr. Vertner to be his editor." 

" Of course I will, little girl. Vertner mustn't be 
allowed to compromise me. Perhaps I've let him have it 
too much his own way. But he knows about the business 
side of it; and after my experience with the Church 
School of Music, I'm willing to let some one else take all 
that responsibility. You can understand that, Dorothy." 

" Oh, father, I'll be so glad if you will. And let some 
one else find the money, too." 

Maurice pensively stroked his long golden mustache, 
with its young-mannish upward turn at the ends, without 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 279 

speaking. " I suppose you see the necessity of my mak- 
ing more money, my dear. The last monthly bills look 
bad. Maverick seems to be dearer than Laughing Valley. 
This editorship is more like a necessity than a choice. It 
isn't time to be too nice," he said, with the doubtful ac- 
cent of waiting her opinion on this. 

This man, who could satisfy his own conscience about 
one and another matter of daily dealing with his fellow- 
men, and forget it lightly ; who could shuffle and balance 
before doubtful questions, and choose the easy issue with 
a sigh for the man he might have been if things had 
turned out differently with him, was afraid before his 
daughter's moral judgments. Their certainty, their bare, 
blind justice, were more than he could bear at times. He 
avoided all such questions with her when he could, but 
he had committed himself to this paper with Vertner ; and 
since he must go on with it, and she had learned of his 
connection with the plan, he would rather go on with 
her support than without it. They lived too much alone, 
he was too dependent upon her for sympathy, to make it 
pleasant for him to carry on constantly, by her side, a work 
of which she disapproved. He was sensitive ; he always 
reckoned with that. If he had not been, it would have 
been easy to use his authority, as he sometimes did in 
cases like that of the money he procured from time to 
time to meet their bills. No one knew better than Mau- 
rice how to put aside discussion of painful subjects with 
dignity ; but no one liked less to accept what such uses of 
power involved. 

He did not think for a moment of abandoning the 
scheme of the paper ; he believed that he and Vertner 
would make a very good thing of it together ; and it was 



2S0 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

five years since he had drunk just the wine he liked. The 
moral' question, which had never occurred to him until 
Dorothy suggested it, he had dismissed without a thought. 
He understood Vertner's advertising plan at least as well 
as Dorothy, hut he saw nothing wrong in it, as he had 
told her. 

He explained to her, now, that it was not original with 
Vertner ; that it had been tried in the East, where a man 
had made a small fortune out of it. There was no harm 
in it, except as there was harm in all business. She did 
not hope to bring in a new sort of business transaction, 
which would leave the money in the same pocket after it 
as before it, he hoped. They did not dispute — he and 
Vertner — that they were going to take money for the 
advertising ; but they were going to give quid pro quo, 
strictly. They did not even leave the degree of circula- 
tion given to the advertisement in doubt, as was usual. 
The advertisers were to pay for what they got, and for no 
more than they got. She heard Vertner in all these 
phrases, yet it was her father who spoke, and she did not 
know how to put her doubts together and bring them to 
bear on him. She found herself shaken by his confidence ; 
but she said : " I see you think you understand, papa. 
But you don't ; you can't, or you wouldn't have anything 
to do with it. These advertisers you speak of — they are 
not to know what Mr. Vertner means to cjp. They will 
suppose that they are giving their advertisement to a 
little paper which will have a circulation of a few hundred 
copies. When the bills come to them, if Mr. Vertner 
succeeds in what he hopes to do, they will be for a circu- 
lation of a great many thousands ; it will go on increas- 
ing every month, arid they will have no redress because 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 281 

Mr. Vertner is going to make them sign a contract for a 
year." 

Maurice laughed lightly. " Don't you think you may 

safely leave Vertner's scheme to the business men of the 

Great West, Dorothy ? Do you think it likely that they 

will not understand all the bearings of a proposition that 

^a girl like you can understand ? " 

Dorothy stared at him. " Oh, I suppose so," she said 
after a moment, daunted. " But promise to insist on Mr. 
Vertner. making it plain to them what they are doing." 
She laughed herself at the futility of this. " I mean," she 
amended, " that the contract should imply what Mr. Vert- 
ner is about — what he hopes to do." 

" They would laugh at what he hopes to do. You do, 
yourself, Dorothy. Every one who knows Vertner under- 
stands his disposition to add ciphers to his schemes. You 
may be sure he has given them all the ciphers that he 
thinks they will credit. After all, you know, Vertner is 
honest. You mustn't be losing yourself in any theo- 
ries depending on the opposite supposition, you know, 
Dorothy." 

" Oh, of course he's honest," sighed she, parting with 
her position, in fragments, as she felt, but with a deep re- 
luctance. She saw that it was one of those obscure cases 
where the ethics have a tendency to liquefy, to escape 
from the instinct which is their only witness, and to melt 
into the medium of the business-like, the practical, the 
customary. She could not detain them ; perhaps she was 
wrong to try. Her father must know ; and, " Yes, I'm 
sure Mr. Vertner is good," she found herself saying, " in 
spite of his ways — perhaps because of them. There is 
something very charming about him. He is so sure, so 



282 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

gay. And I don't believe that he would deliberately do 
anything that he thought wrong," she argued aloud with 
herself. 

" Certainly not." 

She balanced it all in her mind a moment, and then, 
with the recurrence of her loyal trust in her father, which 
at the end of everything had always to be the permanent 
fact in her relation to him and to his doings, she said, with 
a brightening face, " Oh, well, if you have really looked 
into it, papa, and think it right, why — " 

"Yes?" 

" Why, of course it is right. But you will look care- 
fully after Mr. Vertner, won't you, papa? You will see 
that he makes an agreement that will be fair to every- 
body ? " He gave the promise readily, though he had no 
intention of interfering with Vertner. She leaned over, 
and kissed him. " Dear papa ! And shall we be shock- 
ingly rich ? " 

" Appallingly ! " laughed Maurice, easily, as he returned 
to the piano. " Come and sing for me." 

She came over to his side, adjusting the light so that 
it should not fall into the eyes he tired by late reading at 
night. 

" Then you can have a horse and phaeton," she said, 
stroking his hair, as he spread out the music for her. 

" I am not so ambitious, my dear. What I'm hoping 
for is an income which won't force me to look three times 
at a dollar. Twice, I can bear. Well, are you ready ? " 

He struck a chord on the piano, and she raised her 
voice to the first notes of a quaint old air. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 283 



XIX. 



Philip remained a fortnight at Pinon, and it was a 
week before Jasper was seen in Maverick again. Dorothy 
heard from Dr. Ernfield on the day following her parish 
visits and her meeting with Vertner that Jasper was suf- 
fering from the effects of an accident ; but Ernfield either 
knew no more, or thought it well to say no more, for she 
got no particulars from him. Vertner had heard all about 
the affair in the mine from Cutter ; but he had left town 
the day after their meeting to look after a contract for 
the electric lighting of Empire, a mining-camp lying to 
the northward, and was not expected to return for some 
days, so that Dorothy learned nothing from him. 

Jasper's first clear thought on returning to conscious- 
ness was of her. What would she think of the fight, if it 
should come to her ears? Her swift, pitiless moral judg- 
ments were as terrible to him as they were to her father. 
Suppose she thought him in the wrong ? 

But he believed that she had not the material for such 
a thought. Philip's freak of reserve had spared her some 
facts that might affect her judgment, and he believed that, 
in any event, the initial faith in him which Dorothy re- 
tained from the habit of an earlier day would carry him 
through a good deal with her. He accepted now, in good 
faith, Philip's assertion of his forbearance from his obvi- 
ous opportunity, and he saw that she would never hear 
Philip's story until he should force Philip to defend him- 
self by telling her his own. What a frightful ass Philip 
was to play the chivalric at that rate, he mused. But 
that was his affair. 



2S± BENEFITS FORGOT. 

His thoughts melted dizzily into one another, as he lay 
half awake on the morning after the accident, trying his 
eyes in a blinking way every little while on the view from 
his bedroom window. The cowboy who had been nurs- 
ing him assured him that the hill he saw was Mount 
Blanco, fast enough. To Jasper it was a green blur. 
Some sort of film seemed to be crackling and sparkling 
before his eyes, like a kaleidoscope, eternally breaking up 
and renewing itself. He saw objects as the natural eye 
sees the page of a book held within an inch of the pupil. 
He felt vaguely for the bandage on his forehead, and then 
remembered again how it came there, and all that had led 
up to it. At recollection of the blow, the suffocating 
sense of hatred and rage he remembered as he fell was 
fresh in his mind again. He clenched his hands under 
the bedclothes. When he was well again, he should not 
spare. 

The thought that Philip might be making favour 
with Dorothy, or that she might have learned what he 
had refused to tell her, and that the knowledge might — 
nay, certainly would — have effected a promotion of him 
in her kindness, caused him to thresh restlessly about in 
the bed. He told Ernfield, when he came, that he must 
get up to-day. Ernfield smiled quietly, and asked him "to 
try sitting up in bed. He straightened himself, and sat 
up painfully, his eyes wild and unseeing, his carefully 
kept hair in disarray. The air dissolved about him, he 
clutched at his fading consciousness, and fell back among 
the pillows with a moaning curse on his lips. 

It was the fourth day before Ernfield would allow him 
to sit about in his dressing-gown and write a letter, and 
the sixth before he pronounced him well enough to try 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 285 

the voyage down-stairs, staying himself upon the balus- 
trade. 

He made Ernfield remain to dinner with him the first 
day. " I say, I've been taking a simple cut pretty hard, 
seems to me. What's been the matter? What have I 
had?" 

" Why, you haven't had it," said Ernfield. 

" How's that ? You mean I've escaped it. Well, what 
have I escaped ? " 

" Congestion of the brain." 

" Humph ! " exclaimed Jasper, without troubling him- 
self to explain the connection. " That brother of mine is 
a brute." He asked Ernfield if he would take another 
bit of venison, and Ernfield did not pursue the subject. 
He had his own notions of the way his patient had come 
by his cut. 

" I say, Ernfield," Jasper went on, after a moment, 
"you knew something of my new mother when she was 
here in Maverick. What was she like ? " 

"Like?" 

" Yes ; you know I never saw much of her. Was she 
the kind of woman to make my father happy, for instance ? " 

Ernfield busied himself with his fresh slice of venison, 
pursuing a bit of currant jelly with his fork. " I didn't 
know your father well ; I couldn't say," he answered. 
" One ought to know more than one party to a marriage 
to answer a question like that." 

Jasper had heard fragments of the talk which still 
went on in Maverick about Ernfield and Margaret, of 
course. He was revolving the gossip of the town in his 
mind, as he bent his shrewd, penetrating eyes on his com- 
panion's face. 



286 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Yes ; to be sure. But you would form some idea of 
her temperament. Would she be the sort of woman, for 
example, to support my father in — well, in what you 
might call the extravagances of his temperament ? I sup- 
pose you know him well enough to understand what I 
mean." 

Ernfield looked at* him for what seemed a long time 
without speaking. " Yes," said he, at last, with inten- 
tion ; " I know what you mean." 

" It was rather rough, wasn't it ? " agreed Jasper to 
the unspoken comment. 

" It was cowardly," said Ernfield, briefly. 

" It certainly left Miss Derwenter with a nasty posi- 
tion on her hands. It was a test of character — abandon- 
ing her on her wedding-day," he said tentatively. But 
Ernfield did not offer to discuss this. " She came out of 
it curiously — on a plan of her own," he mused. " But it's 
given me a kind of respect for her. Not every woman 
would have done it, you know, Ernfield." 

"I know," nodded Ernfield to the canned peaches, 
which had been set before him. 

" She answered my question for me, there : she sup- 
ported him with a vengeance. But would she in a case 
where she wasn't concerned in just that helpless way ? " 

" I can't answer that," said Ernfield, after a moment. 
" She would do what seemed right to her." 

" Yes," rejoined Jasper; "I gather that. She seems 
to have a conscience. But she seems fond of father, too. 
What I was wondering was whether in a case where he 
was on one side and her conscience on the other, she 
mightn't — well, negotiate with her conscience." 

Ernfield glanced at him without speaking. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 287 

"Well, I'm glad you think so," said Jasper, after a 
moment, in response to Ernfield's contemptuous glance. 
"Father needs a check." He turned the subject then; 
but as he lighted Ernfield's cigarette for him he asked 
carelessly, " Where did the wedding-party go ? Did you 
hear?" 

Ernfield perceived that he meant to imply that he 
might have heard from Margaret since her departure 
from Maverick. But he chose not to resent this. Jasper 
was not worth the powder. 

" No," he replied. He puffed his cigarette in silence. 

The following day, seeing how Jasper chafed under 
his confinement, and thinking, on the whole, it might be 
less harmful for him to venture out than to remain within 
doors, lashing himself into a state of morbid irritation, 
Ernfield consented to allow him to drive to town. Eiding 
he forbade, and Jasper found that the jolting of his buck- 
board was all he cared to bear for the present. 

He had not seen Snell since the day he had called to 
make his preposterous announcement, but this had not 
surprised him. His father and brother were too wise to 
attempt to push the matter to a conclusion while he lay 
ill ; but they should see that he was not seeking a pro- 
longation of the truce. He meant that they should hear 
from him at once. 

When he had been to his lawyer, and arranged with 
him to secure a temporary injunction against Snell, ana 
to begin suit against his father, he drove to the Maurices' 
cottage, smiling for the first time since his discomfiture at 
the " Snow Find." 

He had made up his mind to a definite move which 
would at least relieve him of the fear of what Philip 
19 



288 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

might be accomplishing with Miss Maurice behind his 
back. 

She came in to him with her face alive with sympathy, 
and Jasper was agreeably sure that he had not been wrong 
in thinking she had warmed to him with a new kindness 
in the week before his accident, while he added to himself 
that his illness and the wound on his forehead were not 
things to diminish her mood of good will. He lacked 
material for guessing that part of her mood of sympathy 
was due to the fact that she had just parted with Dick 
Messiter, who had stopped over a train to call on her 
father in regard to some business on his return from a 
visit to Denver. She had found him much changed in 
the week that had passed since his return to his work at 
Laughing Valley City. Much more, Jasper lacked facts 
to understand that her recent disposition towards him was 
the outcome of the talk between her and Philip which had 
followed his encounter with Philip in the doorway of the 
room in which he was now sitting. He was occupied, so 
far as his mind turned towards Philip's refusal, for motives 
of his own, to give him away, with the negative good for- 
tune that she had no information about their quarrel. It 
did not occur to him to imagine that if she knew of a 
quarrel between them, she must believe one of them in 
the wrong, and that Philip might be suffering for his 
quixotic silence. 

" You have been ill," she said. " You have been suf- 
fering." 

" Oh, so, so," returned Jasper. " I got a rather nasty 
cut." 

" Tell me how it happened. No one has been able to 
say — or perhaps no one would." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 289 

Jasper slipped down in the sleepy-hollow chair she had 
forced him to take, and toasted the foot he stretched 
towards the fire, enjoying her interest in his illness. His 
pallor, she thought, became him ; and the firelight, play- 
ing on his handsome face, and twinkling whimsically upon 
the court-plastered wound, lent his solid, prosy good looks 
a remote effect of distinction and of glamour. 

" Don't let me ask, if it's a secret. But if it isn't a 
secret," she went on with a laugh, " you can make it as 
romantic as you like, for I've heard nothing. You can 
make out that you have been rescuing a lovely maiden 
from the Utes, if you wish. That would be as pretty as 
anything. Or you can have been dragged by Vixen, with 
your foot caught in the stirrup ; that would be exciting. 
Or a fight with the Eveleighs about your water rights, or 
fences, which would make a good story. I like mining 
stories, too, Mr. Deed." 

She smiled at him from her seat at the other corner of 
the fire. She often chaffed him to avoid the serious talk 
with him which she had begun to see must one day come, 
and which she feared. 

"This is a mining story," returned Jasper, staring 
musingly into the fire, with a disengaged look. 

"How nice! Well?" 

" Well— I think I mustn't tell it," he said, still seem- 
ing to muse. He glanced at her speculatively, and Doro- 
thy thought she saw that she would not be overstepping 
in urging him. 

" No," he said, shaking his head slightly, in response 
to her mock-humble entreaty ; " it isn't altogether my 
story." 

" How tiresome ! Couldn't we buy out the other man's 



290 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

rights in the story ? Is he the same man who owns a part 
of the mine — was that it ? " 

The guess was wide, and yet so near that Jasper smiled. 
" Something like that." 

He glanced at her with intelligence, and she suddenly 
paled, and cried, in a kind of fright : " Surely it isn't your 
brother ! Surely you haven't been — been — ? " She 
breathed quickly and stopped. 

" Yes," owned Jasper, with the air of a man who 
yields to a revelation past remedy — " yes. Since you have 
guessed it, there is no reason why you shouldn't know. 
But don't ask me any more about it, please. I couldn't 
tell you." 

" Oh, no, no ! " cried Dorothy. " Of course not. i^.nd 
it was he who — Oh ! " she exclaimed. Her tone ex- 
pressed reproach and repulsion and withdrawal. She 
shuddered away from the thought of Philip's act. " And 
you have been very ill. I can see it. Dr. Ernfield would 
not own it, but I could see that he was anxious. He was 
afraid of its affecting the brain." 

" Yes," said Jasper, lightly ; " congestion, and all that. 
But there was never any actual danger of that, I fancy. 
Ernfield didn't really know what had happened to me, 
you know — one wouldn't feel inclined to tell even a phy- 
sician a thing like that, of course — and he thought my 
little scratch more serious than it was. You see, I have 
scored on him. Here I am." 

" Yes ; oh, yes," breathed Dorothy in an absorption of 
which she was unaware, and which was far from being as 
wholly related to the man beside her as he was believing 
with a joy which he could not have concealed if she had 
been more attentive. " But you might not have escaped. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 291 

A little more one way or the other, and — Oh, how could 
he ! " 

Jasper had not expected such success. He thought of 
Philip's chances with her now almost with compassion. 
It was a pretty outcome of the fight that it should make 
for him in her favour, and lead her to so desirable a 
thought of Philip. In the luxury of success, he felt that 
he could afford to be generous— generous enough, at least, 
to let her see that he was. 

" Oh, I don't know," he deprecated. 

" Oh, but I do," exclaimed Dorothy, quickly. All her 
old thoughts about the relations of the brothers returned 
to her, and she now caused Philip to suffer for all the ex- 
cuses she had found for him. 

" No, no ! It was fair enough — as fair as such things 
can be." 

" Would it have been fair if he had killed you ? " she 
asked conclusively. 

Jasper bent quickly toward, her, fixing her with a pas- 
sionate glance. " Would you have cared ? " he asked. 

All his love for her was in his eyes. She lowered her 
own. 

" Of course," she stammered. " Why, yes. But of 
course ! " 

" Would you have cared in the way I mean ? " 

She controlled her eyes now, and swept his pale, eager 
face with a furtive look. 

" I don't know," she said hastily. " I — I think not." 

" Oh, but Dorothy, girl, surely this time you know? I 
have loved you ever since ; I love you even more, I think, 
than then. It has gone on. It has grown. You won't 
say that you haven't seen this — that you haven't been 



292 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

answering it a little bit in your heart. I can't live with- 
out your love. I've tried it a long time. I can't," he 
cried— "I canH!" 

It was the thrilling, irresistible note of passion. It 
seemed to infold and seize her, to benumb her will, to 
make a reason of itself for a return. She remembered 
thinking, in a prevision of this scene, how his will must 
always make a reason for anything he strongly wished. 
The old fascination of his feeling for her returned upon 
her. Ee-created, and palpitating before her as if it had 
never ceased to be an active part of her experience, the 
remembered charm went through her veins exultingly. 

For a moment she felt herself slipping, slipping. 

Jasper read the half consent in her eyes. He rose, 
and drew near her, but at the touch of his arm she started 
away, 

" No, no ! " she cried, rising in her turn ; " I don't 
know ! I must have time to think. Don't press me for 
an answer now ! Don't ! " 

There was a moment in which Jasper stared hungrily 
into her eyes, balancing in the remote second conscious- 
ness the wisdom of pressing his advantage, or of comply- 
ing with the frightened longing for escape from this 
moment's decision which he saw in her face. Her look 
at once promised his bliss and confounded him. 

It was at last his willingness to use the subtle rather 
than the direct means of arriving at any object which 
decided him. 

" Well," said he, " let it be so, then. But you will let 
me have my answer soon, Dorothy ? " 

" Yes, soon," she murmured breathlessly. 

" You have seen that I still cared. You have let me 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 293 

go on. I really don't believe you could have the heart, 
you know, to cast me off now. I don't ask you to say 
anything to that. I only tell you to let you know that I 
trust you completely." 

He snatched her hand to his lips, and was gone. Dor- 
othy trembled to a seat, torn and pulled by a mob of 
emotions — excited, intoxicated, exhausted. 

How could Philip have done a thing like that ! She 
wondered languidly where he was. 



XX. 

0^" the next day Dorothy received the following 
note : 

Dear Miss Maurice : I am leaving town to-morrow for a week. 
Will you give me, to take with me, the hope of an answer on my 
return ? I won't bother you to say good-bye. 

Yours — whatever your answer, always yours, 

Jasper Deed. 

And to this temperate note she wrote, "In a week, 
then." It was like his invariable consideration to deny 
himself a word of farewell. Indeed, she could not help 
imagining in this intended absence a more intimate chiv- 
alry. It was a fine withholding of himself from so much 
as the colour of seeming to influence her decision. 

The truth was that Jasper had found a clue to his 
father's whereabouts through the Leadville lawyer to 
whom he had written the first day he had been allowed to 
sit up ; and after a visit to Leadville he was going in pur- 
suit of him. 



294 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

The impulse of another man would have been to try 
to make sure of his future with Dorothy before leaving 
Maverick ; but Jasper saw clearly that this course, to 
which everything save his discretion urged him, would 
only make sure of a failure which no after patience could 
retrieve. It was better to use a little patience now, and 
to go away. But he thought it worth while to have a 
little talk with Maurice, whom he found at the station, as 
he was boarding his train. 

He took the sleeping-car for his destination with a 
cozy prophecy of success warming his heart. His rever- 
ence for Dorothy's instinctive purity and tightness of feel- 
ing, which was at the root of his love for her, consorted 
with his half -conscious habit of trading on these qualities 
in her, and he was estimating, as he stepped into the 
train, the construction of his departure which he could 
rely upon from her rectitude. He fancied her construing 
it almost precisely as she did, and as he settled himself in 
the smoking-compartment of the sleeper with his cigar, 
he experienced an inexpensive thrill of virtue at the 
thought of the nobility she would be imagining in him. 

The sun shone at Mineral Springs as it did at Maver- 
ick, though there was no snow at Maverick, and at Min- 
eral Springs the snow lay hugely heaped as far as Deed 
and Margaret could see from the hotel portico. The 
snow, in fact, covered all the one-storied houses in the 
place to their roofs, and lay in the Pass at a depth which 
for over three weeks had cut off all communication with 
the outside world, and kept them prisoners. The stage 
had ceased running on the day of the snowfall, being 
caught in the Pass, and snowed up there out of sight. It 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 295 

was likely to lie there until the succeeding spring. The 
driver and his one passenger had ridden into Mineral 
Springs on the backs of the horses. 

Mineral Springs was usually cut off from the outside 
world for three or four months in the year. At its alti- 
tude, and in its situation, approachable only by a narrow 
defile between close-lying hills, this was expected, and, as 
the inhabitants would have said, discounted. But the 
snow did not usually come so early. 

Margaret had smiled with the wistful smile of happi- 
ness, which had made a home for itself about her mouth 
since the day of her marriage, at the intelligence which 
Deed brought her on the morning after their arrival, that 
they were " snowed in." And Deed had found an ambig- 
uous laugh. Margaret said it was delightful. Now they 
could be sure of quiet. Now they should know that the 
disagreeable visitors to the Springs, whom she had feared 
when he first suggested the place, would stay away. Of 
course it wasn't the season for them, anyway. She knew 
that. But those half-dozen stray people who sometimes 
came to such places late were worse than a mob. One 
could decently withhold one's self from a mob ; but the 
half-dozen, if they were in the same hotel, demanded 
sociability, sat at the same table, wanted to organize ex- 
cursions, to get up amusements, to talk at unpropitious 
times, to discuss — the women were the worst — the new 
stitch, and the children left at home, and the altitude. 

When she found that there were no visitors whatever 
at the hotel besides themselves, she had a moment of 
bewilderment; but she said she liked that, too. The 
hotel, which was a large frame structure of three stories, 
built for the summer season, when it was crowded by 



296 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

invalids and tourists, was a building designed to shelter 
forty guests, and even Margaret found the great dining- 
room a little daunting for two. She went to the wife of 
the landlord, — a hospitable creature, largely planned like 
the hotel, — and begged that they might be allowed to 
dine in modified state. The landlady was glad to close 
up the big dining-room, she said ; and after that she gave 
up her usual winter sitting-room to them, and Deed often 
wrote or read there while Margaret sewed. The hotel 
was set on a high hill above the town, and the windows 
of this room commanded an extraordinary prospect of the 
snow-covered mountains rising on the other side of the 
narrow valley. They called it a valley in the town, but it 
was, in fact, more like a slit in the hills, which plunged 
precipitously down on each side, fronting each other at a 
distance of less than half a mile. 

They had stopped at Mineral Springs for the night, 
on the way to Burro Peak City, where Deed hoped to sell 
the " Lady Bountiful." Deed had not meant to take 
Margaret on, but to leave her at the hotel for the necessary 
day or two until his return. Then, he had said, they 
could remain at Mineral Springs, or go on to another 
place to spend the remainder of their honeymoon, as she 
liked. Ah, yes ; with that money once restored to the 
bank, with that stock placed to the credit of his trustee 
account again, he did not care where they went. He had 
proposed Mexico to Margaret in the anticipatory relief of 
having made all that business straight, in the relief of 
feeling himself again in anticipation something more than 
an honest man by brevet. 

And then the snow had come. The way to Burro 
Peak was blocked absolutely, and he could not even get 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 297 

back to Leadville to make a struggle for his good name, 
or to face the consequences, if necessary. To Burro Peak 
not even a post had ventured since the storm. The drift- 
ing snow had buried the narrow trail along the mountain- 
sides, which men took in midsummer with caution, to a 
depth where only the May sun would find it ; and the 
people at Burro Peak City who had once wanted to buy 
the " Lady Bountiful " when Deed had refused to sell, 
might as well not have existed. 

But it was probably too late to do any good now, if he 
could reach them ; he believed Barney Graves, his fellow- 
trustee, would have made the quarterly examination of 
the affairs of the estate at his usual time, and he knew 
what must happen then. Graves lived at Eed Cliff, and 
as he knew Deed to have been chosen by Brackett to be 
one of his trustees as a lawyer, while he knew that he 
himself had been chosen only as a friend, it had been his 
custom to leave the actual work connected with their 
common trust to Deed. In atonement for this seeming 
neglect of his dead friend's interest, it was his habit to 
come to Leadville quarterly to go over the accounts of the 
estate with Deed, note his investments, and, as a matter 
of form, to make a memorandum of the securities in his 
hands. Deed, who had rather relished the trust, on the 
whole, had been able to add largely to the value of the 
estate by judicious management of the mining properties 
forming part of it ; and he recalled the satisfaction with 
which Graves had glanced over his last quarterly state- 
ment, with a miserable wonder as to his present thoughts. 
He made sure that Graves would have postponed the ex- 
amination when he did not find him at Leadville, but his 
continued and unexplained absence Could have had only 



298 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

one effect : it must long since have come to be believed in 
Leadville that he was dead, or that he had intentionally 
disappeared. In the latter case the course was obvious, 
notorious ; the very children knew it from the newspapers. 
In a simpler state of society, he said to himself, scornfully, 
when a man disappeared his friends might imaginably or- 
ganize a search for him ; in his own world he knew very 
well that they examined his accounts. 

The intolerable simplicity of the barrier which with- 
held him from even so much as a chance of making a fight 
for his reputation, goaded him at times beyond endurance. 
Each morning he waked to scan the sky for signs of a 
thaw, and each night cursed the royal setting of the sun, 
which had shone through all the day without diminish- 
ing the snow. Sometimes, in his walks with Margaret 
through the town, or out to the springs on the hill near 
their hotel, he would gather up a handful of the spark- 
ling, fluffy, almost ethereal flakes which held him prisoner, 
staring at them in contempt, and flinging them away at 
last with a helpless shrug. 

What he had done had seemed innocent to him, and 
at worst it was a potential wrong ; the remorseless snow 
and the unwilling sun were making it a crime, day by day. 

Margaret saw that he was troubled, and was grieved 
for him, but it was because of the chagrin of which she 
knew — the chagrin which was cause enough, it seemed to 
her, for any sickness of heart. She comforted him as she 
could about Jasper and Philip (she had, of course, Deed's 
version of the difference between Philip and himself), but 
she knew that trouble to be beyond any one's consolation. 
The double faithlessness and ingratitude, the sudden and 
absolute loss of both his sons, represented a pain to Mar- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 299 

garet which she dared scarcely approach; she felt that 
she could not understand it. It was all that she thought 
it ; and even in the face of the haunting fear which now 
lived in him, it had its way with his heart. He was some- 
times almost grateful for that other trouble, which was at 
least superior in its immediacy, and claimed a part of the 
thoughts which must otherwise, it seemed to him, have 
destroyed him. With the black misery of his real trouble 
— the thought of Jasper and Philip — he got along, for the 
most part, as strong men do with the grief of death. He 
said nothing, and ground his teeth, and did not suffer 
the less. 

If it had not been for Margaret's presence, and for 
the happiness of their new relation, he must have been 
utterly overthrown. She helped him not only by her 
love, her kindness, her unfailing watchfulness, care, and 
sympathy, but in unconscious ways which she did not 
suspect. When she perceived that his sadness and ab- 
straction persisted, she began to charge herself partly 
with it, in her own way — accusing herself of not know- 
ing what to do for him — believing that another woman 
would have known how to comfort him. She tried not 
to let him see that she was searching her conscience for 
grounds of offence, but Deed surprised her in it, and 
blamed himself. After that he joked her steadily, as of 
old, and maintained before her always a gaiety of de- 
meanor which finally almost helped him to forget the 
gulf at the edge of which he was living, even if he could 
not put away from him the corroding thought of his 
faithless boys. 

When the fatality which lurked at his side like a 
shadow would take form before him, in spite of all the 



300 BENEFITS FORGOT. - — - 

resources by which he denied its existence, he usually saw 
himself in the newspapers. He saw in shuddering fancy 
his " case " — it would become his case at once — treated in 
the usual newspaper fashion, picturesquely, lamentingly, 
speculatively, mock-sympathetically, high- virtuously, and 
all the rest of it. Then the State would have its wonder 
at this latest stainless name in the dust, and would have 
its talk, in which it would recognize the entire and cheer- 
ing fallibility of every one else in a world where one 
couldn't be as straight as one would like. His enemies 
would enjoy the realization of their prophecies, while his 
friends — ah, his friends ! — he could not bear that thought. 
When it occurred to him, he would fall to teasing Mar- 
garet about something. They had discovered together an 
infinite number of points at which she could be teased, 
Margaret even learning to enjoy the exploration of her 
seriousness with him. 

She felt that she owed him this ; and she encouraged 
him to joke the seriousness which had come so near to 
wrecking their happiness, as a kind of expiation. It had 
also the advantage of being a refuge from the chivalrous 
gentleness and humbleness in which he now sued silently 
for her forgiveness. She could not bear that he should 
humiliate himself before her, as she had once said coldly 
to herself that he must ; if there was any forgiving to be 
done, he must do it. She felt blessed in being forgiven, 
even if he had been at fault; she found it an odious 
attitude, as a wife, to be brought to book, and forced to 
forgive him. 

For the most part they did not even impliedly discuss 
the question which had separated them, and had gone so 
near to parting them permanently. In the happiness of 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 301 

possessing each other, they could not wish to go back and 
live that night mare- time over again, even in imagination ; 
and it recurred as an actual question between them only 
when Deed, in their happiest moments, would question 
his right to such bliss — to the bliss which he had once 
thrown away, and trampled underfoot. 

He made her many promises, in moods like this, that 
she should never know him again in the convulsions of 
passion which snatched him away from himself, and left 
him to do any evil — the nearest, the readiest — in the 
devil's mind which then replaced his own. Margaret 
would not let him talk of such things for long ; and she 
would not suffer him to reproach himself since the hour 
at the hotel at Leadville when he had done penance be- 
fore her in an abasement which would have satisfied even 
Beatrice. 

In the long evenings they played at cribbage or 
bezique, or, less often, at chess. Chess was Margaret's 
favourite game ; but seeing that Deed lacked patience for 
it, and pretended a pleasure in it only for her sake, she 
would not let him suffer at it, but won him back to the 
lighter diversions in which his lighter spirit expanded. 
Sometimes they would set the cards and the board before 
them for cribbage, and fall to talking, and forget, until 
the evening was over, that they had meant to play. Deed 
made her tell him, at these times, of her travels. 

In the absolute confidence of their new relation, it 
was a curious pleasure to her to tell many things which 
she had hidden away in her soul as things impossible to 
tell any one. The budget of her adventures in the roam- 
ing life she had led before she met him, and even after, 
seemed exhaustless, and Deed was constantly calling for 



302 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

more. He roared with delight at the follies she con- 
fessed, the gaucheries she owned up to. He said it was 
a new revelation of her — this history of her independence. 
He urged her to admit that she had lost by the exchange ; 
he said that she had sold herself into slavery ; he didn't 
see how she contented herself. 

" Don't you?" she said, letting her eyes rest on him a 
moment. 

" No," he said promptly. He leaned towards her and 
took her hand. 

" Why, James, that's just it ! Neither do I ! But 
you see I do content myself. I'm not planning an es- 
cape ; I'm not thinking of running away." 

" Oh, that's the snow," he said. " You couldn't" 

" No ; that's true. But you'll see when it thaws. It 
will be the same." She said this earnestly. Even when 
she let herself go, Margaret held on a little. 

"Ah, you say so. That's like the bird that never 
shows a wish for the old freedom until you open his cage. 
Then — whisk ! And away he goes ! Margaret," he said 
seriously, " don't you sometimes — just a little bit — catch 
yourself longing for the old, free life? You remember 
your hesitation about marriage, and how you came and 
held back, and consented and refused, and ran away and 
took refuge in your wretched idea of independence, and 
sometimes wouldn't so much as look out to take a peep. 
Occasionally I used to think that you actually feared a 
future in which you wouldn't be allowed to take care of 
yourself." 

" Yes, yes," she said. " I know. It was so. And 
now I like to be taken care of." She nestled up against 
him. " I like not to be free. I enjoy being ^-pendent ! 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 303 

Oh, I was foolish ! " she whispered. " It seemed right — 
that life I was leading. It seemed good and natural. 
But it wasn't. This is right ! " She looked up at him. 

Their love was good to them, and not the less good 
because they won from it the sane and tempered bliss of a 
man and woman past the dithyrambic joys of first youth. 
They had been parted by such a difference as might have 
risen between the hottest-blooded pair of young lovers 
who ever cried off with each other over a ribbon or a 
photograph ; and they had come together no less eagerly 
and gladly, in the young-lover manner, as if nothing had 
ever been between them. But now that they had each 
other, their happiness was the quiet, full-bodied content 
of the long-married. To have surprised the glance of 
serene trust that would pass between them when their 
eyes met, to see the unafraid tenderness which had come 
to Margaret since her marriage, to see her lay her hand 
on his, or stoop to press a fleet kiss on his forehead, as 
she passed him during the day upon her errands from 
place to place, would have been to be taught a great kind- 
ness for the marriage state. 

If he could have escaped the pain about his boys, 
which was always by him, and could have banished the 
threat hanging over him, Deed might have been continu- 
ously happy. As it was, he was very happy when he 
could forget ; and Margaret, who had nothing to forget 
save her permanent trouble about his act against Jasper, 
of which she forbade herself to speak, was exaltedly 
happy. 

They went upon walks within the valley over the 
beaten snow, where paths had been cut, amusing them- 
selves in the town by the sight of the entombed houses 
20 



304: BENEFITS FORGOT. 

sending up a pathetic slip of chimney into the air, out of 
which the smoke curled steadily. They liked, too, to see 
the nimble householder come out of his home through the 
roof, using the aperture prepared for such emergencies in 
building mountain houses. Once they went down at 
night and watched from the snow, ten feet above the side- 
walk, the crowd which gathered nightly at " Mulvaney's " 
to hazard their earnings at faro and poker. Margaret 
disapproved of it, even as a spectacle ; but she listened 
when her husband told her how, the night Philip had 
maddened him, he had gone to Pop Wyman's and lost a 
thousand dollars in an hour. He did not tell her how he 
had settled with Philip, of course ; that might have in- 
volved the other. 

The path to the springs, which gave the town its 
name and part of its prosperity, was one of their favourite 
walks. It ran along the mountain-side on which the 
hotel itself hung ; but the spot at which the water bubbled 
warm out of the earth, and spread itself steamingly about, 
commanded an even opener prospect of the hills than 
they got from their window; and they were fond of 
coming here at sunset, to watch the great disk go palpably 
down behind the summit of White Face, scorching the 
snowy ridge with colour. 

The sun had set and left the air chill, and the evening 
was suddenly grey, as they turned one day from this spec- 
tacle, conferring pensively on their happiness, as people 
will who can keep their happiness at this hour. They 
saw the figure of a man coming towards them along the 
path, and began to abuse him to each other for poaching 
on the solitude. Then they saw it was Jasper. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 305 



XXI. 



As Philip's train felt its way cautiously down out of 
the mountains into Lone Creek Valley, on his return from 
Pinon some days after this, he was hoping that he should 
find Jasper well enough to see him. He meant to seek 
him at once on his arrival at Maverick, and to give up 
the " Little Cipher " to him. He had borrowed the mine 
from him, when he found it served his purpose, with the 
thought that Jasper had left it with him for a year, and 
could probably spare it to him for another week or two ; 
and to himself had added that, if he couldn't, he didn't 
care. It was the first good the mine had ever done him, 
and it was certain to be the last. He took what advan- 
tage there was in the attribution of proprietorship during 
the ten days he remained at Pinon, reminding himself 
smilingly that he might considerably lengthen his tenure 
of the " Little Cipher," and still leave a good balance on 
the credit side of his account with Jasper. 

But, as he drew near Maverick, he was seized with the 
desire to have the thing immediately off his hands. He 
did not like the suggestions that were bred of this seem- 
ing ownership ; and since the bitterness of giving up his 
find to Jasper must come, he wished to have the business 
of the surrender over. 

Philip's habitual choice of the comfortable issue from 
a difficulty sometimes led him (out of mere need for an 
untroubled mind) to march up to troubles which he 
loathed and feared with an unintentional effect of hero- 
ism. The idea of turning over to Jasper the mine he had 
discovered, staked out, and worked, was galling enough to 



306 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

be more comfortable as an accomplished fact than he could 
hope to make it as a prospect. 

Now, too, that he knew what the surrender meant, 
since he had seen for himself the possibilities of this mine 
which he and Cutter and Vertner had made a jest of, the 
splendour of the prospect would sometimes thrust itself 
luminously before his eyes, in empty moments when he 
would let his gaze wander from the plain fact of Jasper's 
right to the " Little Cipher." 

The ease with which he had, for the moment, reaped, 
without his will, the advantages of ownership at Pinon, 
polluted, every little while, the wholesome current of his 
thoughts. He put the fantasy from him, when it would 
recur, with the sense that he could not be well ; it was in 
this way that murderous aberrations and the lunacy of 
suicide assailed men. And yet there would return upon 
him that air-born phantom of a thought, that the fiction 
of his ownership, which had lasted a week, needed no 
motion on his part to make it permanent ; that he had 
only to keep silence. 

The arrangement by which he had carried on the two 
mines in his own name lost its old naturalness as he found 
himself wishing heartily that Jasper had always known 
which mine was his, or, at all events, that some one per- 
son — only one — knew at this moment which was his, be- 
sides himself. He could easily have told Cutter in the 
Pinon days ; but he wasn't protecting himself against him- 
self in those days, and he shouldn't tell him now. He 
could fancy even Cutter, with all his right-mindedness, 
palliating the obvious facts of the situation, or diminish- 
ing his clear obligation. The person he wished to tell, 
now, was Jasper. He could be depended on not to dimin- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 307 

ish the obligation. He would demand an account of every 
penny he had expended on the " Little Cipher " since the 
first pick was driven into the claim ; and would ask for 
any stray bits of silver he might have brought away in 
his pockets. Jasper knew his rights. That he (Philip) 
had staked out both claims in the beginning as his own, 
was nothing. That he had mentally turned over the 
" Little Cipher " to his brother when Jasper had written 
asking him to see what a " flier " of $500 would do for 
him on Mineral Hill, was all that would interest Jasper. 
Bless you ! he wouldn't care for the registry at the Land 
Office. If it had been the other way about, there might 
be some sense in showing by the Land Office books, the 
advertisements, and all that, that only one name had ap- 
peared in all the transaction, and that, legally, the two 
mines belonged to one person. But, in the present situa- 
tion, Philip's mental cession of the " Little Cipher " to 
him plainly settled the question. Jasper couldn't care to 
"go behind the returns," Philip said to himself, with a 
curl of his lip, as the spire of St. John's in the Wilderness 
came in sight, and he began to get his hand-luggage to- 
gether. 

The sight of the church recalled Dorothy to his mind, 
from which, in fact, she had never been absent since the 
memorable day of their last interview; and he said to 
himself that it was because he was unhappy, not because 
he was unwell, that the vile thought of the simple, the 
fluidly simple, course open to him dared dance about him 
beckoningly. If he had not wrecked himself with her, if 
he could think she could ever care for him, his normal state 
of cheerful spiritual health would come back to him, and 
such thoughts must find their proper place as nightmares. 



308 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Dorothy ! Dorothy ! " he caught himself crying 
inwardly. " Can't you see that I must have you ! Can't 
you see that I can't live without you ! " 

As he left the train at the Maverick station, and went 
into the hotel, which stood on a level with the station 
platform, overlooking the arriving and departing trains, 
he met Maurice at the door, coming out. 

Maurice's round, handsome face, which we know found 
a smile readily when the occasion seemed worthy of it, 
wrinkled into a beaming smile of welcome for Philip. He 
offered him his large, fair, fat hand. 

" Why, my dear boy ! " he exclaimed in his mellifluous 
accents. " Just returned, are you ? " with a glance at the 
traps Philip was carrying in his hand. " It's good to see 
you again. It's a long time since you've let us have a 
glimpse of you. Oh, I know, I know ! " he exclaimed at 
Philip's deprecatory beginning. " We've been hearing of 
your doings." Maurice spoke with a benevolent smile. 
Philip wondered what he meant. He made a motion to 
walk by Maurice, whose considerable bulk blocked the 
narrow hotel entrance, with the purpose of depositing his 
luggage with the clerk of the hotel, whom he knew. But 
Maurice laid a fatherly hand upon his shoulder. " Don't 
do that. You are going on to the ' Snow Find ' in the 
course of the afternoon, I suppose ? " 

" No," returned Philip, abruptly ; " I'm not. I am 
going on to ' The Triangle ' to see my brother." 

" Oh, indeed. He left town a few days ago, to be gone 
a week ; so that what I was about to ask you to do holds 
good," he went on, without pausing to observe Philip's 
agitation. " You will be going on to your mine later in 
the day, as you can't see your brother, and you must come 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 309 

on to the house, and lunch with us, and take on your 
things from there." 

" Why — " began Philip, confused and baffled by the 
news of Jasper's departure, and at a loss to understand 
Maurice's sudden warmth. This had hardly been his tone 
at their last meeting. Philip was about to say something 
which would have implied that Maurice was presuming 
on a relation between them which did not exist, when his 
companion broke in with : 

" Ah, that's good ! I hoped you would. Well, that's 
settled, then. You will want to get rid of the railway 
grime. We will go right on to the house, if you like. I 
was just returning home from some parish calls at the 
hotel. You know Mrs. Montgomery Bolton ? " 

Philip said he had seen her, as he walked on by 
Maurice's side, dazed and irresolute. He wished to see 
Dorothy, of course ; would he not be a fool to quarrel 
with his luck ; would he not be twice a fool to demand 
of Destiny, in Maurice's shape, the cause of this tempo- 
rary amiability ? He could have laughed, if he had been 
in a mood to laugh at anything, at the recollection of 
Maurice's cold and formal greeting at their last encounter. 
What intention towards him, what hope of service from 
him, was in the clergyman's mind ? 



XXII. 

Maurice did not leave him long in doubt. He con- 
gratulated him on his " strike " in the " Little Cipher," 
using the slang. He had heard of it from Cutter, he said. 
Was the assay as large as Cutter said ? 



310 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Philip had begun to hate the word " strike," and in 
his loathing for the congratulations which had pursued 
him since the first day, he was much further gone. The 
very conductor of his train from Bayles's Park had wanted 
to smoke a cigar with him on the strength of his strike. 
He had ceased to start at these felicitations, but they were 
irritating. If anything could have increased his grudge 
against Jasper for being the man to whom he must sur- 
render the " Little Cipher," it would have been that the 
circumstances of the case were things that one couldn't 
explain to a man who wanted to smoke a cigar with you. 
It was a fact, if any one liked to put it in that way, that 
he was turning over to his brother a mine to which Jasper 
had no claim save such as existed in one conscience ; but 
it wasn't the sort of fact that one could mention as one 
observes that it rains. 

It was impossible — he said this to himself when he 
found that he was not denying Maurice's congratulations 
in the first instant of hearing them — that he should ex- 
pose his motives to the comment of every mind he met 
on his way to Jasper. It wasn't decent ; and, at all events, 
would be intolerable. Yet in the next moment he saw 
that he must tell Maurice, though he was the last man to 
whose eye he should care to submit the spectacle of his 
moral processes. The moment lengthened, however, and 
he did not tell him. 

As the gate slammed behind them, and they stood in 
Maurice's front yard, Philip felt again that he must speak. 
It came upon him with renewed force that Maurice had a 
right to know, and that he would be wronging him in 
keeping silence. Maurice stood in an entirely different 
relation to the fact from any one else he had met since he 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 311 

knew it himself. To keep silence in Pinon, or before his 
conductor, might be a matter of taste ; but not to tell 
Maurice was a kind of fraud, perhaps. 

He had opened his lips on the door-step, with no no- 
tion of the way in which he should begin, when Dorothy 
appeared at the bay window, which jutted out into her 
flower-bed in the yard. Philip had a vision of a black 
skirt, and an electric blue blouse on amiable terms with 
the fair face above it. She waved her hand gaily to her 
father with a gesture in which Philip might include him- 
self or not, as he liked. It seemed a very long time since 
they had spoken together ; it was a fortnight since he had 
seen her. The apparition at the window filled all his 
senses. He did not go on with what he was saying. 

The stainless white brow of Ouray, visible from the 
door-step, fantastically seemed to be wrinkling itself in 
reproach as he went in with Maurice. 

Maurice opened the door into the parlour far enough 
to say to Dorothy that Mr. Deed would stay to luncheon 
with them, and to ask when it would be ready ; and then 
led the way up-stairs to his own bedchamber, where Philip 
got rid of the railway dust, and did what he could by way 
of freshening the effect of the miner's dress in which he 
had hastily set out for Pinon, a fortnight before, lacking 
one day. He wondered how she would receive him. He 
braced himself for the reception, which he feared, and 
which he felt he had probably earned. 

She received him, however, — as he might have guessed, 
— as a hostess, not as a woman. Her expressionless cor- 
diality, her meaningless courtesy, daunted him. He would 
rather have been snubbed outright. Her father, who had 
taken up his stand with his back to the wood fire in the 



312 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

grate, smiled on the meeting. A moment later he was 
called from the room by information from the servant 
that his sexton, Sandy Dikes, was waiting to speak with 
him. 

" Miss Maurice — " began Philip, entreatingly, as the 
door closed behind her father. 

She stopped him to ask if the room was not too hot 
for him. Philip was going hot and cold by turns, but 
the temperature was not at fault. He said it was not too 
hot for him, unless — " Oh, no," she said, shaking her 
head. 

Her smooth tones, her conventional smile of good so- 
ciety, began to madden Philip. He felt like an unprac- 
tised skater slipping impotently about on new ice. 

The passive r61e assigned to women, which puts them 
under so many disadvantages, certainly has its moments 
of triumph. Philip wondered if women must always use 
them as cruelly as Dorothy was using them, out of a will- 
ingness to avenge themselves on the other moments of 
helplessness to which the role condemns them. 

At last he looked into her eyes, and asked, without 
preface, " Is there boiling oil in all your punishments, 
Miss Maurice ? " 

" I don't know," she returned politely, with the same 
glittering and correct effect of having said nothing. 

" Because if I might choose the quality of my mercy, 
I should like it strained. I suppose I am not worthy of 
the unstrained. At all events, the steady drip, drip of it 
doesn't soothe me as it ought to. Please strain your 
mercy, Miss Maurice. What I need, I see, is open cru- 
elty." 

She stared at him a moment, in doubt how she should 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 313 

answer this. " I am glad you think that," she said seri- 
ously, at last. "But you must look to some one else 
for it." 

" You mean that it is enough to have deserved such a 
punishment from a person without asking her to be at the 
pains of administering it ? " 

" I think you are much in the wrong." 

This time there was no mistaking her earnestness. 
" Good heavens, Miss Maurice ! have I been guilty of 
other crimes besides those I know ? " He paused nerv- 
ously, observing to himself how beautiful she was in the 
sudden pallor for which he blamed himself. The fair hair 
curling spontaneously about her high, white brow ; those 
melting grey eyes, dashed with the whimsical thread of 
brown; the delicate little mouth, which he had set 
vaguely quivering now ; the poise of her exquisite head — 
seized him with an irrelevant and fruitless yearning. 

"You know best about that," she said, and he saw 
she was answering a question he had forgotten the pur- 
port of. In an instant, however, he remembered. 

" Miss Maurice," he cried, " are you fair ? I give 
you my word I don't know what you are talking of, un- 
less you are still thinking of the wickedness I know of ; 
and I can't believe that it's only that." 

" No ; it isn't that," she told him, a little wearily. 

" Is it anything to do with that — with my brother ? " 
he asked desperately. 

"Yes." 

"I might have known it! Well, what, Miss Mau- 
rice ? " he demanded, in unconscious rudeness. " I have 
borne pretty much all I am able from Jasper. Has he 
been telling you how I have wronged him ? " 



314 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

"Do you think that would be like your brother?" 
asked Dorothy, with an implication in her voice which 
nettled Philip beyond control. 

" No ; I don't, Miss Maurice. He probably told you 
how finely I have been behaving towards him, and you 
guessed the other thiug from a combination of your 
knowledge of me, and your certainty that Jasper would 
always have a chivalrous word for his enemy." 

" Now it is you who are not fair," she rejoined. 

" I don't mean to be unfair," he said, and there he 
stopped. " Did he tell you of his visit to the ' Snow 
Find ? '" he asked suddenly. " Is that it ? " 

" No," she returned tremulously. " I guessed it ; I 
forced it from him ; I surprised his confidence. And, 
after all, he would tell me nothing ; I would not let him 
tell me anything. But I understood." 

" Ah," exclaimed Philip, bitterly, " you understood ! " 

She rose haughtily. He saw that he had gone too far. 

" Oh, I am abominably rude ! Pardon me — or, don't 
pardon me ; tell me to go. But if you knew, Miss Mau- 
rice — " 

"Tell me," she begged. She put forth her hand. 
Philip seized it, and dropped it instantly. He turned 
away. 

" No, no ; I can't," he cried. " Somebody ought to 
tell you, perhaps. But I can't. It isn't — it isn't de- 
cent." He clasped his arms despairingly behind his 
shaggy head as he walked from her towards the window 
and stared out at the long backbone of the Sangre de 
Christo range. 

She guessed this for the pride it was ; but she had no 
information which could have enabled her justly to esti- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 315 

mate the obscure and multitudinous motives which made 
it up, and she was far from guessing the rightness of feel- 
ing which actually lay at the root of it. 

" But there is something I can tell yon, Miss Maurice," 
he said, turning suddenly, with a new light in his eyes 
which awed her. She shrank from him, and sat down 
hastily. " Perhaps it will explain for me — not this pre- 
cisely, but everything ; and if it explains nothing, why I 
shall be content that you should not understand my rela- 
tion to Jasper, either, because nothing will matter then. 
I have no right to tell it to you, though you have a right 
to know it. But I can't tell you unless you promise me 
to understand that it asks nothing of you, that it has no 
relation to you except as your knowledge of it may help 
you to — to understand — I love you. That is all. I love 
you." 

She dropped her eyes. 

" I wanted you to know," he said, in the silence that 
fell. 

" Yes," she whispered, in assent to this. 

" But I didn't want — I don't want the fact to exist for 
you, except as it may help you to think more kindly of 
me ; to — to understand." Philip believed that he meant 
this. " I have no right to speak of it — and absolutely no 
right to found anything further on it." He did not say 
it in the hope that she would contradict him ; but a pang 
shot through him when she did not. He should not have 
told her any more, he said proudly to himself, whatever 
she might have urged against this statement; but her 
silence whetted the pain at his heart. He rubbed the two 
half-dollars left over from his journey to Pinon against 
each other in his pocket, and thought how the actual oc- 



316 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

casion of his forbearance lacked dignity ; it really wasn't 
as noble as it seemed, perhaps, for a beggar to refrain 
from a proposal of marriage. When the beggar happened 
to be as much in love as he, however, it was hard. 

" Well," he went on, as she still kept silence, " there's 
nothing more to say." He came over to her, and offered 
his hand in farewell. " Good-bye, Miss Maurice. If you 
ever give me a thought after this, remember, please, that 
whatever you have to think of me, it was in this way that 
I thought of you — that I shall always think of you." 

She still said nothing, and he turned to go. 

"But," she called after him, raising her head now, 
with a smile in which many emotions played, " you are 
going to stay to luncheon, Mr. Deed ? " 

He turned at the fancy of a note between roguish and 
caressing in the sound of her unsteady voice, and started 
towards her, withholding himself instantly. Then he re- 
membered what she had asked him, and could have 
smiled for the absurdity of his unhappy lover exit ar- 
rested by the banality of a luncheon engagement. 

" No — no, I mustn't," he found himself saying ; but he 
heard the door-knob turn in Maurice's firm clutch, and 
knew that he must. 

Maurice came in upon them, rubbing his large hands 
in smiling hospitality, and abandoned the amiable com- 
monplace he had ready for Philip, to glance sharply at 
the two. He concealed adroitly his sense of having inter- 
rupted an intimate collision ; but he followed them into 
the dining-room, after having asked Philip to give his arm 
to Dorothy, with a look of grave satisfaction on his face. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 317 



XXIII. 



The luncheon lagged, though it began with salmon, 
and went on to escalloped oysters, to quail on toast, and 
finally to a California fruit that none of them knew. 
Dorothy said she had forgotten its name ; it grew in a tin 
can — like the oysters and the salmon. They ate, save 
Maurice, as if the quality of the luncheon alone concerned 
them. Maurice talked beamingly about a host of sub- 
jects, in the full, orotund voice which sounded so well 
from the pulpit. He made all the talk. Philip was silent 
and ill at ease ; Dorothy answered her father and kept 
him going. She flushed when Philip once looked her 
way. After that they avoided each other's glances. 

When they were alone with their wine and cigarettes, 
— Maurice kept up the customs of a higher civilization 
jealously, — the clergyman told Philip the history of his 
purchase of the claret he was drinking with the delibera- 
tion which characterized his talk. Philip writhed in- 
wardly. He longed to get away. 

Maurice seemed to have plenty of leisure, however, 
and made no move to rise. He left inviting gaps in the 
conversation when he had done his story of the wine, as 
if he expected Philip to take it up, and Philip had begun 
dimly to divine an intention in this, when Maurice finally 
said himself : 

" I think, Mr. Deed, we may deal with each other 
quite frankly." He cleared his throat, caressing his wine- 
glass meditatively. 

Philip bowed politely across the table, not knowing 
what was coming, but feeling the assumption to be a safe 



318 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

one. He had always been on his guard in his few conver- 
sations with Maurice. He did not trust him. He found 
himself constantly wondering what he was up to, what 
purpose underlay the obvious meaning of the things he 
said. 

" Yes ; so I thought," continued Maurice in response 
to his nod. He offered him cigarettes. Philip took one, 
and struck a match. As Maurice lighted his own, he 
glanced at his companion through the smoke, and asked, 
as if it were a casual question, " May I ask if I rightly 
infer that you have a more than common regard for my 
daughter?" 

Philip flushed. He was wholly at a loss for an answer. 

" I need not say that it is not to challenge such a re- 
gard if it exists, nor to question your action in any way, 
that I speak," continued Maurice in a conciliatory tone, 
anticipating the resentment of his inquiry which he began 
to see rising in Philip's face. " I should not ask if I had 
not good reason — the best of reasons. You w 7 ill quite 
agree with me, I am confident, when you understand what 
they are. But first, as to the main question. I need not 
repeat it ? " 

"No," said Philip, and was going on angrily, but 
stopped himself. "Yes; you are right. I love Miss 
Maurice." 

He remembered that he was talking to her father, who, 
after all, had an excellent right to question him. 

" Ah ! " said Maurice, " I have long believed as much. 
May I ask — it is my last question — if I am right in sup- 
posing that you have made Dorothy aware of this?" 

Philip remembered the scene on which the clergyman 
had just come in. He had hoped that it might never be 



BENEFITS FORGOT., 319 

known to any soul ; least of all did he like to talk it over 
with Maurice. But he said helplessly and a little savagely, 
" It is true. Yes. But—" 

" She has refused you, then ? " 

Philip frowned. " I don't know why you assume — " 
he began. 

" Mr. Deed, we shall get on in this delicate matter only 
if we understand quite clearly that I speak as your friend," 
interrupted Maurice. He sipped slowly at his claret. " I 
know that I may not always have seemed so ; but I have 
learned — some things have come to my knowledge." 

Vaguely and doubtfully at first, and then surely, Philip 
had seen for himself that Maurice's inclination toward 
him was friendly. 

From whatever cause, out of the coldness he had kept 
for him hitherto ; out of the warm and friendly associa- 
tion with Jasper of which every one in Maverick knew ; 
out of the old liking for the match broken off by Dorothy, 
which Philip suspected in him ; and, at all events, out of 
the open favour he had lent the new relation between 
Jasper and Dorothy, this was the issue. It was strange, 
but he did not doubt it, and if he had doubted it, Maurice's 
next words must have been convincing. 

" I have heard the truth about you and your brother, 
and I have reason to believe that Dorothy is still in igno- 
rance of it. You are aware of the feeling I have had 
towards Jasper. I have liked him — we have liked him, 
and Dorothy still does. It is because I believe that Doro- 
thy's proper understanding of some things, just at this 
moment, may deeply affect her future and yours, and — 
mine, that I wish to offer you a friendly word." 

" You are very good," murmured Philip, plunging 
21 



320 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

about in his imagination for a final meaning beneath 
this. 

" No. If I am good, it is to Dorothy — to myself. 
You may believe that I should hardly be speaking to you 
in this way if it were not of vital concern to me that I 
should." 

He judged it unnecessary to enter with Philip into the 
facts he had lately learned regarding Jasper's present ten- 
ure of the ranch. The injunction against Snell had be- 
come town talk within two days of Jasper's departure, and 
had set all Maverick agog for the painful but interesting 
story which must be lurking behind this action of Jasper's. 
Maurice had heard the entire story from Cutter, who saw 
no reason to withhold the truth when Maurice questioned 
him at the post-office on the day he heard the rumour of 
the injunction. 

" I shall speak plainly, Mr. Deed, for both our sakes," 
the clergyman pursued. " I think it right you should 
know that your brother has proposed to Dorothy." 

"Jasper ! " cried Philip. He fronted Maurice abrupt- 
ly, perusing his face with an estranged regard. 

" Have you not known ? " exclaimed the clergyman. 

" Known I " repeated Philip, with a haggard face. 
" Yes ; oh, yes." And, after a moment : " He has offered 
himself. He has been accepted. Why do you bring me 
here to tell me this ? " 

" He has offered himself," assented Maurice, passing 
over Philip's tone with dignity, " but he has not been ac- 
cepted. Dorothy has promised him his answer within a 
week. The week will be at an end to-morrow." Philip 
opened his lips with a passionate impulse, but swallowed 
back his words, grinding his teeth. " What his answer 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 321 

shall be depends, as I believe, upon the way in which you 
may receive what I have to say." 

" For God's sake, man, go on ! I'm listening." 

Philip bit his lip, and waited for what might follow, 
with his eyes fixed on the line of low-lying hills opposite 
Ouray, which were visible from the dining-room window. 

" Quietly, if you please, my dear young sir. This mat- 
ter, let me remind you, concerns me at least as much as 
it can concern you. Dorothy is my only daughter. My 
life goes with her happiness. But we can gain nothing 
by haste." Philip made an impatient gesture of apology. 
He stared at Maurice restlessly, across the table, with his 
chin in his hand, as he went on. 

" What I am about to say," continued the clergyman, 
"is most intimate. It touches a subject which I had 
hoped never to be obliged to reopen to any person living. 
Circumstances have ruled otherwise, and I have now only 
to add, in disclosing certain facts, that I shall look to you 
to regard them as communicated under the most sacred 
seal of confidence." 

These cautious guards and defences, these precautions 
against one knew not what, by turns tortured and sick- 
ened his companion. He found his perception reeling 
giddily every little while before the clergyman's abomina- 
ble flow of language, which seemed one sheen to him, like 
the glaze on paper. 

" I don't know whether you know precisely the cir- 
cumstances attending my departure from Laughing Val- 
ley City ? " said Maurice, interrogatively. He tried for a 
parody of the importance of the name in his voice ; but 
his anxiety came uppermost. 

Philip turned towards him quickly and said : " I am 



322 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

glad to have the opportunity of letting you know, Mr. 
Maurice, that I do know rather more than it seemed a 
kindness to Miss Maurice to mention in the cave that day. 
I have never felt quite right about that. But it seemed 
to Cutter and me that she would not care to know that 
we had seen what passed on the hillside above the canon 
the day of the storm. If I had imagined that it could 
make a difference to you, I should have spoken long ago. 
It was Miss Maurice who was in my thoughts," he con- 
fessed. 

" Ah, I am glad of that — yes," mused the clergyman ; 
" glad, because it will help you to understand a feeling of 
mine about that — that circumstance. I have never told 
Dorothy the actual — the exact occasion of that scene on 
the hillside." Maurice leaned over towards Philip, and 
questioned his face closely. "Do you know it?" he 
asked. 

" No," said Philip. 

" Ah, well, perhaps that is as well, too. You will be- 
lieve, when I tell you this, that I am concealing nothing 
from you. The Vigilance Committee" — he gave them 
the title with a curl of his large, handsome lip, from 
which he stroked away his jaunty mustache — " thought 
me in the wrong in refusing to go and read the funeral 
service over two men who had died at Laughing Valley of 
smallpox." Maurice's face worked, and for a moment he 
did not attempt to go on. " The right or wrong of that 
we must leave to a higher tribunal," continued he, dis- 
missing the ethical question with a gesture. Philip shud- 
dered. " What immediately concerns us is that Dorothy 
has never known why I was forced to depart from the 
place." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 323 

"She must never know," said Philip, huskily. A 
vicarious sense of shame for the clergyman would not let 
him lift his eyes to look in his face. 

" Exactly. She must never know. But there is an- 
other matter of which she must not know." 

He turned a doubtful eye on his companion as he 
paused. Philip turned cold, wondering what worse thing 
this man could have done to shame his daughter. 

" It is, in a way, all the same matter," Maurice was 
saying, while his companion dumbly waited and wondered. 
Philip drew a breath of relief. " Information reached me 
a week since through a good friend of ours — of hers, of 
yours ; in point of fact, through Mr. Messiter, that — " 

"I beg your pardon. Is Mr. Messiter back in Mav- 
erick? I heard that he had returned to his mine at 
Laughing Valley." 

" So he has," responded the clergyman, with the ghost 
of an indulgent smile for Philip's transparent impulse of 
jealousy. " He came here a week ago, for the day only, 
to see me — in point of fact, to warn me. He had heard 
rumors at Laughing Valley that some of my enemies 
there had been inciting the bishop, when he visited the 
place a fortnight or so back, to take some action founded 
on this— this accusation against me ; and like the dear, 
good fellow he is, knowing what that must mean for 
Dorothy, he had posted down to Denver, without stop- 
ping to consult me, in the hope of inducing the bishop 
not to move in the matter." Maurice sighed. " It was 
good of him, but it was useless. Once brought to the 
ears of the bishop, I have always known what must hap- 
pen." Philip saw the green hills outside the window 
swim before his eyes. " And — well, the end of it is that 



321 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

I have this morning a letter from the bishop — generous 
and temperate, even fatherly, but quite plain — suggesting 
that it would be convenient if I should let him have my 
resignation of my charge here." 

Philip took the letter he handed him, as he started up 
with an inarticulate groan on his lips. He carried it to 
the window, and stared at it for a moment helplessly ; the 
words refused to relate themselves to one another, and he 
finally turned and gave it back to Maurice, in silence. 
The clergyman shrank from the look on Philip's face as 
he put forth his hand to take the letter. 

" Yes," owned he ; u it's bad. It is a blow. I won't 
deny it. And yet not an unbearable blow to me. I have 
expected it, for one thing; and I see, now that it has 
come, that I have long been half willing." He looked at 
Philip sharply. " I was not made for a clergyman, Mr. 
Deed." 

" Oh, don't say that, man ! " The cry was torn from 
him. " For heaven's sake, don't say that ! " The igno- 
minious, the disastrous fact seemed to connect itself intol- 
erably with the thought of Dorothy ; it seemed to leave 
two lives in ruins. If it had been the clergyman alone, 
one would have seen only the tragic waste of a career. 
But as the fact involved Dorothy, Philip could not face 
it. 

Turning towards Maurice, he saw that a ghastly pallor 
had stolen over his face, which was sunk upon his breast. 
He went over to him, and clapped him on the shoulder. 

" Come ! " he said gently, with an indescribable min- 
gling of contempt and pity pulling at his heart. " Take 
this ! You will feel better." He poured a glass of the 
wine Maurice had been discussing in that moment of 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 325 

after-luncheon talk which seemed now so far removed. 
The clergyman snatched it, and drank it off. 

Philip was ashamed to be a witness to his recovery of 
himself. He turned his back, and went to the window, 
within sight of which a rider was endeavouring to break 
the spirit of a bucking pony. There was a large open 
space behind the house, and untamed broncos were often 
brought here from the neighbouring livery-stable for this 
purpose. The tiresome iteration of the seesaw motion 
with which the brute was viciously endeavouring to throw 
his rider renewed Philip's restlessness. 

" You must go away from here," he heard himself say- 
ing to Maurice, as he turned in the need of action, or the 
suggestion of action. " You must go at once." 

Maurice shook his head with the sadness of superior 
knowledge. 

" No, no ! It is ended. I shall never preach again." 

Philip was appalled. 

" Oh, my dear sir, shake this off ! For your daugh- 
ter's sake, — for Dorothy's sake, — shake it off ! " 

Maurice looked up at him with a mournful smile. 
" Shake it off ! My dear young man, I have been dis- 
missed. I have been disgraced. Oh, my God ! " he cried, 
breaking down suddenly, and burying his face in his 
hands. 

Philip bit his lip. For a moment there was silence in 
the room. Then there came a ring at the outer door, 
and a knock at the door of the room in which they were. 
Philip darted to it, with the fear in his throat that it 
might be Dorothy. It was the servant, come to say that 
Mr. Yertner was in the parlor. " Say that Mr. Maurice 
will see him presently," Philip said. 



326 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Do you mean to say that you could not secure an- 
other parish ? " he demanded, as he returned. 

Maurice, who had risen at the knock, and was rest- 
lessly pacing the room with his hands in his pockets, 
stopped before the table, littered with the remains of the 
meal, and absently took a bonbon from a plate. 

" Secure it ? Perhaps. Keep it ? No. This story 
would rise. Oh, I'm not degraded from my office ; I'm 
not unfrocked, as they used to call it ! " He laughed 
scornfully. " It's simply a story — the most powerful, the 
most subtle, the deadliest, the most pitiless enemy a man 
can know. If I were younger, or — let me say it all — if I 
cared for my calling as I once did, if I could be back at 
twenty-five again, fresh from the seminary, a young di- 
vinity student, with the old fire, with the old feeling that 
the priesthood was the holiest, the noblest, almost the 
only possible vocation in the world — ah, then I might go 
on and fight it out. I might try to live it down. But I 
don't care. I have learned to live another life. I have 
always wanted to do other things, and x even when I cared 
most for my work, I have clone them. I have done them, 
at last, so much that they own me. I don't care" he re- 
peated in a kind of cry of pain, and stopped short in his 
march from end to end of the room, to add, looking Philip 
in the eyes — " except — except for one thing." 

Philip framed her name with his lips. Maurice nodded. 
" For Dorothy I would give all that remains to me of life ; 
for Dorothy I would go on in this work of mine, if they 
would let me, always. She cares for it. To see me give 
it up will be a shock to her. To see me forced to leave it 
in disgrace would kill her." 

" She must not know it," said Philip, setting his teeth. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 327 

" Must not," repeated Maurice. He stopped again, 
and faced Philip. " Ah, I hoped you would say that ! I 
knew it. You understand, then, my purpose in telling 
you. You can see, now, how it is that the man who is to 
marry Dorothy should share this purpose with me." 

" To keep the knowledge from her ? " asked Philip, 
quietly. He divined with contempt how Maurice must be 
doomed to long with all his cowering soul that Dorothy 
should never come to know him as he was ; but he forced 
himself to do justice to the impulse of love which had 
the same need., Maurice loved his daughter ; he forgave 
him much for that. 

" To keep the knowledge from her," repeated Maurice. 
"Perhaps you can also understand how it is necessary 
that he should be able to keep it from her." 

"Able?" 

"If I give up my calling, Mr. Deed, I give up the 
only means I know of earning a living. I can stay in it, 
and fight, and she must know ; or (the question of liveli- 
hood being done away with) I can leave it apparently of 
my own will, and she need not know. I must stay in it, 
if I must go on earning my living ; I must leave it, if she 
is not to know." 

Philip regarded him in amazement. The words sang 
through his head backward and forward. He made noth- 
ing of them. 

" Yes," he assented, without knowing to what he as- 
sented. ^ 

" A week ago I should have been saying this to your 
brother. I know him now. It is impossible that I should 
any longer wish his marriage with Dorothy. And yet it 
may still have to be. You know Dorothy's relation to 



328 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Jasper. Why not say it frankly? You know that she 
once cared enough for him to engage herself to him." 
Philip bit his lip. "You can judge whether it is un- 
likely that she will accept Jasper to-morrow when he 
comes, if nothing happens." 

Philip clenched his hands. " Likely ? It is certain ! 
You don't know ! " 

" I do know," rejoined the clergyman, quietly. " I 
have gathered my own impressions — from Dorothy, from 
the discontinuance of your visits to us, from other things. 
I know what Dorothy thinks ; and I know, now, that she 
is wrong. It is because of that I speak." Maurice looked 
at him keenly. " I wish something to happen," he said. 

Philip felt himself choking. " Do you mean — Speak 
out, man ! Do you mean that — that you think I have a 
chance with her ? " 

" Ah, I must not say. I recommend you not to be 
discouraged." 

" Oh, if I thought it ! " cried Philip. 

" I only ask you to remember my situation — hers — 
what we have said." 

" Tell me," exclaimed Philip, fiercely, with a sudden 
thought, " have you told all this to Jasper, and has he 
refused to listen? " 

" No," returned the clergyman, without offence, and 
with the sad calm that remains to the purposes of a 
broken man ; " I have spoken first to you. I shall state 
the necessities of the case to him only if you force me to." 

A wild joy played through Philip's veins. He turned 
away to hide his unhoped-for happiness, with its perfect 
mingling of a satisfied, a richly satisfied debt. He drank 
deep of the pleasure of holding Jasper's fate in his hands 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 329 

before he would turn and face Maurice again. It was 
worth while to have borne what he had borne from Jasper 
for this moment. 

" You will see now — I may say it frankly, since you 
understand, now, that it implies no reflection on you — 
how, in my present situation, in Dorothy's situation, I 
could not let her think of a poor man, even if she were 
inclined to." 

Philip started. He remembered his old, his rooted 
distrust of Maurice. Was it possible that all this story 
was devised — cooked up? But if it was, what was its 
object ? He had nothing to give Maurice ; he could do 
nothing for him. Surely he was the type of poverty. 

And then, in an instant, he saw. He perceived that 
he stood on the brink of a precipice, and realized that he 
had brought himself to it. It was not Maurice. Beside 
him the clergyman was a man of truth and justice and 
honour. 

" That is so," he heard the clergyman going on, " be- 
cause the man who marries Dorothy must be able to make 
it practicable for me to leave the ministry, now, at once ; 
and, naturally, without the scandal which would kill her." 
He paused. Then, after a moment : " But if Dorothy 
should listen to you," he added, "it must be so for 
another reason. If Dorothy should engage herself to any 
one but your brother, it is right to tell you that I must 
be prepared to find a considerable sum at once." 

Philip's eyes fell. The clergyman studied his face 
attentively. 

The younger man raised his eyes at last, and gave back 
Maurice's look. 

"Why?" he asked coldly. 



330 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Because I owe your brother rather more than five 
thousand dollars." 

"Jasper? Why? How?" 

" The larger part of it was a loan from him to enable 
me to take a share in Vertner's paper, ' The Kalendar.' 
The rest is made up of smaller sums, borrowed before and 
since. It began with a trifling loan to assist me in escap- 
ing from certain difficulties, rising out of my Church 
School of Music in Michigan. You may have heard of 
my failure there. I have always been grateful to him for 
that. And from time to - time I have wanted money. I 
have never been able to make my tastes harmonize with 
my income. I think you know how that is, Mr. Deed." 

Philip winced at this home-thrust, and winced even 
more at the association of himself with the pitiable man 
before him. " Things which to a certain order of mind 
seem luxuries, to us — to me are necessities. Jasper has 
found his account in this. When I have wanted money, 
he has always pressed it on me. He has had his purpose. 
But he has not let me feel it. A week ago, after he had 
spoken to Dorothy, he sought me at the station. He re- 
minded me then." 

" Cad ! " exclaimed Philip under his breath ; but his 
mind was already far away. A thousand thoughts went 
racing through his head, grouping themselves odiously, 
and dissolving again in strange and alluring shapes. 

His companion did not respond, and the conversation 
fell. 

Philip sat staring moodily at the stove, which, in this 
room, replaced the usual open fire. A kettle hummed on 
it, purfling on the air its leisurely cloud of steam. The 
cat, lying before the stove, purring regularly, and the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 331 

ticking of the clock on the mantel made the silence 
hideous. Philip knew that his hope of Dorothy, his 
future, and his honour lay on the other side of this 
silence. 

In the swift, final moment of temptation, if a man 
may be said to think, it is at least not his present thought 
which decides. The thoughts already allowed himself ; 
the trivial consents ; the reasoned compliances gone before, 
determine for him. He may even find himself bound by 
his silences. And for Philip, casting about in the blind 
fever of his hope to save himself, the right and whole- 
some thoughts which he could still conjure to his aid were 
answered not by another and an evil thought, but by a 
feeling— a sweet, strong ecstasy, that gripped and held 
him, and seemed to have its own sacredness. 

Maurice's secret — was it likely that Jasper would keep 
it from Dorothy beyond the moment in which it served 
his interest to guard it? Had not he, Philip, the pre- 
eminent right of reverence, of tenderness, over a future 
that must always be threatened by the knowledge of what 
Maurice had told him? And he loved her. Did Jasper 
love her as he loved her? A passionate belief in the 
supreme right of his love filled him. 

Yet all the rectitude of a life unspotted by an act of 
wrong rose in protest. Little impulses mingled with the 
big. A certain pride which he had always kept about his 
final integrity in money affairs, in the midst of the loose- 
ness about them of which every one knew, caused him to 
smart in imagination. He seemed to see that he could 
not do this thing ; not for any happiness the earth could 
hold, not for Dorothy. 

He opened his lips to tell Maurice that the " Little 



332 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Cipher " was Jasper's, and that, if he sought a man strong 
in the strength that wealth gives, it was to him that he 
really must turn ; but the silent shaping of the sentence 
in which he should tell him, gave the whole story of his 
real relation to Jasper back to his memory. 

Was it more or other than a fair exchange — the ranch 
for the mine ? It was ever Jasper's taunt that he did not 
pay his debts. There was a debt he would pay. The 
accumulations, the additions, the compound interest of 
insult and offence, now gathered themselves in his mind 
into a single bulk, in the face of which all scruples grew 
absurd. 

He would pay the debt ; and if he overpaid it, there 
was always the obligation his father owed Jasper. The 
balance could be credited to that account. As he thought 
of his father, the savage impulse of hate which had caused 
him to gloat a few moments earlier in the knowledge that 
Jasper's future lay in his hands, sent a sweep of exultant 
yearning for vengeance through him. 

He saw that in all his forbearance towards Jasper, in 
his softening of his father's wrath, in the just course he 
had tried to walk with his brother since Jasper had 
wronged him, the black hate which now rose in his heart 
had its part. It must always have lain crouched there. It 
seemed now to spring out from him into an awful aloof- 
ness, where, with a beast's instinct, it had the will, if he 
would let it, to rend and tear. 

Was he to give this man a fortune ? Was he to beggar 
himself for him ? He was ready to do that. He meant 
to do it. But how if to impoverish himself and to enrich 
Jasper was to lose the new hope of Dorothy, thrilling 
along his pulses like wine? Could he bear it? Perhaps. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 333 

But to lose her that Jasper might win her ? He shook 
his head with a gentle smile of scorn. 

" Well ? " inquired Maurice. 

Philip rose suddenly. A light shone in his eyes. 

" May I speak to Miss Maurice ? " 

The clergyman glanced at him in surprise. But he 
rose, and went to the door with him. 

" Yes." 

Philip passed out into the hallway with the nicker of 
a smile on his set lips. 



XXIV. 



The sun was dyeing the paper stained glass in the 
hall windows to a similitude of the costly beauty they 
imitated as Dorothy went to the front door at sound of 
the bell. Through one of the palest lozenges of glass she 
discerned a figure which she knew for Vertner's. His 
hand was on the bell when she opened the door to him. 

" Oh, are you back, Mr. Vertner ? " she said, offering 
him her hand. 

" Yes. You just saved yourself. In another minute I 
should have started that slam-bang gong on its errand of 
destruction." It was one of the gongs, set in the door it- 
self, which explode a clangour through the house, sending 
a shiver to the remotest nerve of the structure. " There 
would be bells in your landlord's house if we had the 
building of it, wouldn't there ? We'd have them in the 
window- sashes ; they'd go off when Oozzens opened his 
bureau drawers ; they'd be concealed in chairs ; we'd pave 



334 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

the house with them ; he'd go to sleep to a weird whir 
from the cellar, and wake to the unmerciful buzz of one 
of the things by his bedside. I think we could fix him 
out. How's your father ? " 

Dorothy smiled, and changed the subject with his own 
facility. " Papa is very well. Would you like to see him ? 
He is at luncheon with Mr. Deed, but he will be in in a 
moment." She opened the door into the little parlour at 
the front of the house. 

" Don't disturb him," said Vertner, as he walked 
briskly over to the plant-stand on which Dorothy kept 
her winter flowers, and put his face down into a geranium. 
" You made out with the cactus, didn't you ? You must 
show Beatrice. No ; it was only a little matter." 

"About the paper?" 

" Well, partly. I've got a new idea about ' The Kalen- 
dar.' But I think I must have wanted to see you as much 
as anything. We haven't talked ' schemes ' for a long 
time, have we ? " 

It had been a joke between them since the day of their 
conference about the paper that Vertner must always dis- 
cuss a new scheme with Dorothy before finally commit- 
ting himself to it. He pretended to defer to her advice, 
and Dorothy pretended she believed that he did. 

" Oh, no," assented Dorothy. " What is the new one, 
Mr. Vertner ? Is it a bonanza or a gold-mine ? I'm sure 
' some one is bound to go into it if you don't,' and that it 
will give you the ' cinch on the whole business,' " she said, 
parodying his phrases fearfully ; " but do you think we 
ought to go into it ? Should we ' come in on the ground 
floor ' ? That's the important point for us to consider, 
isn't it ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 335 

She made these suggestions absently. She was think- 
ing of something else. 

" Well, I don't know," rejoined Vertner, gazing at the 
blooming cactus, while he swung his hat between his legs. 
" Don't you think we ought to make sure first whether 
Schlesinger will sell ? " 

Dorothy brought herself back to give this question the 
advantage of her judgment, and they laughed together as 
Vertner explained his plan of forming a syndicate to buy 
up the entire municipality of Spesiana, a deserted city in 
the mountains, which had enjoyed its boom, but had not 
lived through it. Vertner meant to organize another 
boom. Schlesinger had bought most of the city lots on 
speculation, but he would sell, now, if he was approached 
right. The boom would begin after the sale. He said he 
could work the newspapers. 

Vertner noticed that Dorothy's attention wandered. 
She usually listened to his schemes intently ; and guessing 
that something interested her more at the moment, he 
changed the subject with, " So Jasper is back ? " 

" Mr. Deed ? No ; it is Mr. Philip Deed who is with 
papa." 

" ISTo ? Is it ? I want to see him. I want to con- 
gratulate him. You heard, of course ? " 

"About his mine? Oh, yes; Mr. Cutter told us." 

"You don't seem very glad," he said, glancing at 
her. 

" Glad ? Oh, yes." 

" Well, then, not enthusiastic." 

Dorothy regarded him studiously a moment without 
speaking. Many thoughts were going through her mind, 
many considerations ; and at last a resolution seemed to 
22 



336 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

enter it, for she said suddenly, and with an effect of 
bracing herself : 

" Mr. Vertner, do you know Mr. Philip Deed very 
well ? " 

Vertner was instantly serious. " Yes, Miss Maurice. 
Very well. Why ? " he asked kindly. 

" Because — You will know of a difference he has had 
with his brother — a quarrel, I — I don't know what. I 
haven't liked to ask. But I must ask some one, now. 
And you — you will know." 

The uncharacteristic hesitations, the tremulous ad- 
vances and retreats, seemed to Vertner to call on his 
chivalry. 

" But surely you have heard — " he began blunder- 
ingly. 

" I have heard of the injunction which Mr. Jasper 
Deed has secured against his brother — something about 
his ranch. Yes. He has had to defend himself, at last." 

" Who ? " 

" Why, Mr. Deed." 

" I beg your pardon, Miss Maurice, but which ? " 

" Mr. Jasper Deed, of course." 

"Jasper?" 

She nodded. 

" Jasper 9 " he repeated. " Jasper defend himself, and 
4 at last ' ? Miss Maurice ! Why, would you mind 
telling me how much you do know of this ? " 

She shook her head in rueful bewilderment. " I don't 
know." 

" Well, you know how things stood when he went 
away. Let's find a basis, Miss Maurice. This hurts my 
poor head." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 337 

" But you don't suppose he would tell me, surely ? 
You know him, Mr. Vertner. Does it seem likely that 
he could condemn his brother to me if — if he had suf- 
fered from him ? You don't know. Even if it were 
likely, it would have been impossible to him, to any one, 
as — as things have been." 

"Would it?" asked Vertner, in a daze. "Oh, yes; 
of course it would ! " And then, " To whom ? " 

"To whom?" 

" Yes ; whose impossibility ? who couldn't ? Yes ; 
that's what I mean ? " 

" Mr. Jasper Deed," she said quickly. " Who else 
could I mean?" 

" Oh, I don't know ! I don't know ! " cried Vertner, 
beating back an imaginary army of conjectures with his 
outstretched palm. Then falling sober again, "Philip, 
for one, I should say, Miss Maurice." 

" Before lie went away, did you mean ? " 

" Well, yes," drawled Vertner. 

« But—" 

"And did he never tell you how things stood in this 
case of Deed versus Deed ? " 

"Ah, you expect him to have condemned himself? 
So did I. I thought him strong enough. I believed he 
would rather condemn himself than let me doubt his 
brother wrongly. Oh, if he had been strong enough for 
that, I should have believed in him always ! I should 
have known. He did not believe that I would know. 
He would not believe that I should understand how his 
brother could be maddening, and he — he hot-headed." 

" And do you mean to say — ? " cried Vertner. " Oh, 
no, no ! I knew the boy was a wild and roaring unicorn 



338 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

on some subjects, but I never supposed he could go and 
be such an ass. And you have been thinking that lie was 
the one to blame in all this row with Jasper ! Oh, that's 
very pretty ! " He paused a moment to contemplate the 
beauty of the idea. " And you never knew that Jasper 
had done his brother out of his share in the ranch by a 
foul trick, and broken his father's heart by the same op- 
eration, and sent him to — You never knew all that ! " 
he exclaimed, breaking off suddenly. " And you've been 
thinking — oh!" Vertner exclaimed. "Why, you must 
keep up with the news of the day, Miss Maurice," he told 
her, when he could speak. " You mustn't let these facts 
of contemporary human interest get by you in this way ; 
though, come to think of it, I don't know how you could 
have heard about it, unless Phil had told you. Except 
Deed and his wife, who have taken their knowledge off to 
heaven knows where, no one knows anything about it but 
Philip and myself. Jasper knows about it. But he didn't 
tell you ? No ; naturally. There has been one other — 
the fellow who bought the ranch — Snell. But he's been 
keeping it dark, i" don't know what's possessed to." 

" Bought the ranch ? " gasped Dorothy. " Mr. 
Snell?" 

"Yes. Oh, yes. That's just a little bit from this 
picturesque muss. You shall have the rest if you like the 
sample." 

" Tell me the whole, please, Mr. Vertner. Tell me 
everything," cried Dorothy in a brave voice that died 
away in a quiver. 

When Yertner found himself in the street a little 
later, after telling her the whole story, including Deed's 
and Margaret's share in it, he turned towards home, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 339 

cursing himself roundly. He did not like to see a 
woman cry. 

Dorothy stood with her face pressed against the 
pane, looking out desperately towards the big, uncaring 
mountains. She felt Philip by her side, and could not 
turn her face. They stood together in the window, for a 
moment, in silence. 

" Would it matter if I said — " began Philip in a low 
tone. But at the sound of his voice she turned her 
streaming eyes upon him, and he stood gazing into them. 

" Don't ! " she begged brokenly. " Don't ! " 

He shrank. It was like a ghostly voice crying out on 
him to stay his purpose. 

" No ; you must listen ! " he had said incoherently, 
before he knew. He did not know what he meant to ask 
her to listen to. 

He seized her hand involuntarily. She caught it away. 
" No ! " she cried. " No ! You don't know ! " 

His conjecture darted instantly to her father. Had 
she heard ? Was the little leaven of another's good to 
fail his act? Was she to suffer, notwithstanding? The 
flux and influx of his will about the odious thing he was 
doing went on in him subconsciously in the face of his 
resolve to take his right, to use the mine which was not 
his, to square accounts with Jasper, to deal with him as 
he had been dealt by. 

The thought that he should not benefit her daunted 
him. He seemed now to himself to find his only warrant 
for his act in this little note of right, of kindness, or of 
love, which sang within it somewhere. 

" I have wronged you, Mr. Deed," he heard her saying, 



340 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

as all his resolve seemed sucked away from him in the 
sudden outflow of his will. " Oh, I have wronged you 
bitterly ! " 

He looked up. " Wronged me ? " he cried. 

" Yes, yes ! Oh, yes ! We can't speak of it. There's 
nothing I can say or do that could make you know how — 
how I feel to have — to have — " 

He saw the tears start in her eyes with a shock of 
shame. " I hope there isn't, Miss Maurice. Don't try to 
say anything like that. Pray, don't. I couldn't bear it." 

" But I must. Your silence — I misconstrued it. I 
thought—" 

"And you don't think so now? I'm glad of that." 
He took her hand, and this time she let him keep it a 
moment. 

" But — you don't know what I have thought of you." 

Philip frowned, but he said with a smile, " I don't 
care ; or I sha'n't if you'll tell me what you think now." 
He bent over her, looking into her eyes. She dropped 
her gaze to the carpet. 

" Look up ! " he said. She obeyed him slowly. They 
let their eyes rest on each other, and melt and mix in a 
glance that taught them each other. Then he stooped 
shyly, and kissed her. 



XXV. 



The days that followed were very dear to Dorothy. 
She had given herself wholly to Philip in that first meet- 
ing of the lips, which seemed to make all things straight, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 341 

and straight forever. She had her reserves with him, but 
she had no doubts. She knew now that she had been his, 
and only his, from the beginning. She thought of Jasper, 
as she now saw him, with a shudder, and made up to 
Philip in her heart, if not in the outward expressions she 
allowed herself, for every kindly impulse towards Jasper 
she had known. 

For the contumely which she seemed to herself to 
have heaped on Philip in believing him in the wrong in 
the question between him and Jasper, she could find no 
proper penance. But the purity, the instinctive morality, 
the pitiless, colorless sense of right which Jasper feared 
and admired in her, saw in this silence of Philip's, which 
had gone so near to cost them each other, a nobility be- 
yond praise. Philip laughed at this when she told him 
of it in the long interchange of confidences which filled 
the afternoon, after he had spoken and had taken his an- 
swer from her. She liked to have him laugh ; but she 
said that however wicked and wrong and dangerous it 
was to have kept that silence, it was fine, and she would 
not have had him speak — especially when he saw that she 
doubted him — even if — 

" Even if — ?? " queried Philip, with the rising inflection 
of impudence. 

She looked at him for a moment in affectionate mus- 
ing. He reached from the other end of the sofa, where 
they were sitting, and took her hand. " No," she said, as 
her eyes filled spontaneously with happy tears ; " I should 
never have forgiven you if you had let it go so far as 
that!" 

She began to abuse his foibles to win her way back to 
her reserves. She said it wouldn't do to spoil him too 



342 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

much. He had spoiled himself enough already. It was 
no wonder that she had been a long time making up her 
mind to accept such a reckless, careless, extravagant, 
haphazard lover. 

" Oh, come ! " cried Philip. " There was nothing 
haphazard about my love. I wished sometimes that there 
might be." 

" There's something haphazard about *a young man 
who buys three ponies when he can't possibly use more 
than one." 

"Not when one of them is for a young lady who 
chooses to take a view of things, after the purchase of 
ponies, which makes it impossible to ask her to ride one of 
them." 

Dorothy blushed. " Oh ! " 

He made her agree to use one of the ponies as her 
own ; and when he had taken himself off to the " Snow 
Find," having first given his orders about the pony at 
the stables, where he had left the animal after he had 
ceased to see Dorothy, she sent word to the livery-stable 
people that she should want to ride in the morning, early. 
She caught sight of Ernfield's boy passing the house on 
his way to the stables, and despatched the message by 
him. 

" Be'n gittin' good news, Miss Maurice ? " inquired 
Fred, as he laid a hand on the phaeton she had come from 
the house to stop. 

She saw that he recognized the happiness in her face ; 
and she liked Fred well enough, and felt safe enough with 
him to say, " Yes, Fred — very." But she admonished her- 
self that this public expression of her happiness wouldn't 
do ; and she asked Fred about Dr. Ernfield. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 343 

" Oh, Doc's all broke up lately," said the boy. " / do' 
know what's the matter of him. He usen't to be like that. 
He don't seem to have his old git up an' git any more, Doc 
don't. Here I be'n drivin' round to tell our patients that 
we can't come to-day. We're laid up, we are ; and that's 
the way it goes." » 

Dorothy's heart went out to Ernfield in a pity which 
took a new edge from her own fortune. She asked Fred, 
while she smiled at his invariable air of proprietorship in 
Ernfield, to tell the doctor that she was coming to see 
him next day, if he would let her. She felt as if her love 
somehow consecrated her to all the suffering and failure 
and misfortune everywhere. She felt as if she must be 
worthy of her bliss ; it must teach her to look out, not in. 
There was a fresh force in the world ; it was created anew. 
It seemed to her that her whole life must be an outgiving 
of the great spiritual truth which had descended upon 
her. Her one word, of which she had learned the mean- 
ing for the first time to-day, seemed to explain so much, to 
make so much perplexity smooth, to melt so much doubt 
and trouble, to make foolish so much striving. The joy 
which knocked at her heart, and seemed to beat there 
sometimes as if it would burst its gates, was not a thing 
of which either she or Philip should take all the good. 
It was for everybody ; only, she thought, they should not 
know what blessed them. And in the morning, as a be- 
ginning, she took her ride. 

It was a good ride. She seemed to find herself in it, 
and these early, sunny morning hours, in which she fled 
along the mesa alone, in a sweet abandonment to the joy 
of the motion of the morning, and of the inward tumult 
of her thoughts, remained always in her memory as mo- 



344 • BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ments a little better than speech could report. Even 
Philip she never told of this ride. 

They took many rides together, however, in the valley, 
and among the mountains, and up the mountains ; and 
the compensatory law of Nature by which the work of the 
world is continued in the face o# an engagement enabled 
the usual output of ore to be taken from the " Snow Find " 
daily, with little assistance from Philip. Cutter was one 
of Nature's assistants in this, and the lovers recognized 
together his unfailing goodness. Philip went back and 
told her about their life together at Pinon. He said 
affectionately that Cutter was an awful ass, and the best 
fellow in the world. He should be sorry when he grew 
less an ass, because he might be less entirely the best fel- 
low. He said, moreover, he was afraid that the West was 
teaching him something; he feared he was acquiring 
sense about some things; he could see his affectations 
dropping away from him one by one. 

And then he told her about Cutter's affair with Elsa 
Berrian, and Dorothy compassionated him tenderly. She 
wished every one they liked to be engaged, to be happy in 
their love. She said hard things of Elsa, but she professed 
to be sure that she and Cutter would understand each 
other, finally, as they had. Surely they had suffered 
enough from misunderstandings, but all had fallen out 
well with them. Philip ridiculed her optimism; and 
then he asked her if she was quite sure that even they were 
beyond the reach of the accidents of fate. They would 
sometimes feign themselves lost to each other for the 
pleasure of surprising their happiness afresh ; but some- 
thing in Philip's voice made her turn upon him quickly. 

" Why ? Is there something ? Have you heard from 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 345 

your brother ? What is it, Philip ? " She laid a gentle 
hand on his arm. 

They were riding on the pine-covered mesa. 

Philip denied to himself the ache and the foreboding 
out of which he had spoken, as he held aside a bough to 
let her pass. 

" Nothing," he said. " Why should there be any- 
thing?" 

" I don't know. Everything makes me afraid. It was 
never so until — until I had this to lose. It seems to me 
every little while as if something must happen. Perhaps 
we are too happy." She sighed, and Philip laughed down 
the wasteful use of a present happiness as an object for 
the threats of destiny. 

" Do you suppose," he asked, " that no two people 
were ever happy enough before to excite the jealousy of 
the evil-minded fates?" And he added that the fates 
were still kept so busy on the Atlantic seaboard that they 
hadn't had time yet to come West and grow up with the 
country. " They may be wrecking the happiness of some 
loving pair in Connecticut, or Massachusetts, or New 
York at this moment. In fact, it's likely. But they 
haven't time for Colorado. Business is too brisk where 
they are." 

She laughed, and Philip proposed a gallop. He was 
willing to be rid of his own thoughts. 

Dorothy liked to make him see how she had come to 
be such a goose about the proportion of his guilt in the 
affair with Jasper. It involved accusations on both sides, 
and, on the whole, they liked the security with which they 
might now accuse each other as well as anything. She 
asserted that her idea about that affair was not merely the 



346 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

natural conclusion, but that she should think the same 
thing again. 

" Oh, come ! " cried Philip. " Not quite ! " 

" I don't know," said Dorothy, judicially. " You see 
what I went on. I was sure you were a hasty, hot-tem- 
pered, sensitive, high-strung, harum-scarum young man," 
she said, smiling at him, " and I knew your brother for a 
gentleman of judgment. You must remember that he had 
never given me any reason to doubt his honesty or his — 
his virtues. They weren't romantic, like the vices of some 
other people I could name, but they were solid. At least 
they seemed so. I believed in them, at any rate ; I sup- 
pose I ' esteemed ' them. Isn't that the word ? " 

" You took good care not to esteem my virtues, I 
observe." 

"Did I?" quizzed Dorothy. "I hadn't noticed. 
Were they about?" 

" They weren't estimable." 

" I'm sure I didn't esteem them." 

" I believe you. You were busy." 

" Yes," she said, with a little arch lift of her eyelid ; 
"loving them." 

They had been climbing the hill which Margaret and 
Ernfield had once climbed. He caught her hand to his 
lips. 

It was easy to answer such expressions — of which, how- 
ever, she was very frugal — in the manner allotted to them, 
and to find the moment's happiness which they should 
produce to the normal lover; but it was impossible to 
keep this content. And when he was away from her, in 
the face of every reason for joy, he was blankly miserable. 
Cutter, who was the first to whom he told the news of his 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 347 

engagement, and who rejoiced in it as became a friend, 
noticed his moodiness, as Vertner and Ernfield did, also, 
after a time ; and they twitted or gibed him after their 
several fashions, until Cutter saw it was serious, and set 
himself to help him, if he could. But Philip repulsed him 
almost rudely. 

In the long nights he thought he must tell her ; but 
when he saw her radiant face again, it was seen to be 
impossible and absurd. No ; he had bought his happi- 
ness with a price. If the price was high, the more reason 
for not risking it by suffering foolish qualms to tempt 
him to the revelation which hung always on his lips. He 
thought sometimes that she must read his secret in his 
eyes. How could it be that a man should lose the power 
to face himself in the defenceless moments of solitude, 
and fail to show it in his countenance ? 

He could still make it seem right — what he had done 
as it touched Jasper. Nay ; it sometimes seemed as finely, 
as excellently, right as it had seemed in the moment which 
had persuaded him to the wrongful silence he was now 
committed to. But as it lived in the same world with 
Dorothy it was a foul and unspeakable thing ; it was to 
the full the wrong, or more than the wrong, it could have 
seemed to his old rectitude, if it had approached him in 
its naked guise, with no question of Jasper, of vengeance, 
of wrong for wrong, or of the love for which he had 
done it. This love was now good and sweet to him only 
as he could find a purity of impulse in himself answerable 
to the purity of hers ; to his inmost core he felt soiled by 
what he had done. Her very caresses were a shame to 
him. He thought how she must start away from him if 
she knew. 



348 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

In these moods he framed a dozen passionate confes- 
sions in which he told her that he was a scoundrel beneath 
the least of her kindnesses ; he said that he had her love 
on false pretences ; that she should know him — all of him 
— to know how unworthy he was. He said in these con- 
fessions which were never made that he would go away ; 
that they would not meet again ; and that — at this point 
a crazy pang of jealousy would intrude, and he would 
remember that he could not leave her to Jasper. He 
knew that she now despised Jasper. Yet this seemed 
possible or even probable. 

In the midst of this harassment of mind small things 
gave him pleasure. It was with a strange joy, for ex- 
ample, that he arranged the details of borrowing, on the 
security of the " Little Cipher," the sum which Maurice 
owed Jasper. He transacted the business, giving him the 
money that was to deliver Maurice from Jasper, and to 
place Dorothy forever beyond him, with a pleasure hardly 
diminished by the sense that he was at the same time 
giving the final sanction to his deed, and making retreat 
impossible. 

He recognized, with a start, as he stood by the bank- 
er's counter, the feeling which he had accused in his 
father. His own perception of the unwisdom, the wrong, 
of reprisal upon Jasper, he had played utterly false, and 
he found himself rejoicing in having done so. He knew 
now the exultation his father had felt in squaring himself 
with Jasper. Still more clearly, but sadly, he saw how 
his father had been led to cast back in his face his own 
seeming ingratitude. 

Ah, if he could only get at his father, they might 
understand each other now. His father was the one per- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 349 

son to whom lie could fancy himself telling his story un- 
reservedly, if he could only find him and reconcile himself 
to him. He did not believe he would be the surer that 
his plea for Jasper had been the false one it would now 
more than ever seem, though he thought of this. What 
came to him was that his father was the one man who 
could wholly know the goaded mind in which it had come 
to him that he could not let Jasper win his love from 
him, too. 

The thought made the discovery of his father's where- 
abouts even more than the immediate necessity it had been 
for the past two months. He enjoyed the reflection that 
Jasper would now be indirectly furnishing him with the 
money for lack of which he had hitherto failed to find 
him. He said to himself that he would start soon — at 
once ; and then he recalled that he had promised himself 
to remain in Maverick until Jasper's return. If Jasper 
should ever come to know what he had done, he did not 
wish to give it to him to say that he had dodged away. 
He wished to face him. He was not ashamed of what he 
had done — not, at least, before Jasper. 

He did not find his feeling about it, even as it touched 
Dorothy, continuous. There were odd lapses in it, fol- 
lowed by quick returns of remorse. It would die away 
from him in good hours, when they talked together, and 
grow a callous lump which he was conscious of carrying 
about in his bosom as a burden ; but he was not constantly 
sure of its meaning. At these times his willingness to 
enjoy the nearest pleasure, his liking for the comfortable, 
the agreeable arrangement, minded him to keep it out 
of his sight, if he could, and forget it. Surely he had a 
right to his hardly won bliss ; and if he had not, no 



350 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

one was likely to be benefited by any foolish asceticism 
about it, unless, indeed, Jasper, whose enjoyment of his 
brother's incapacity to taste the joy he had snatched 
from him, being imagined, helped Philip to forget man- 
fully. 

They sometimes talked of Jasper to make sure of their 
possession of each other; they even indulged a wonder 
why he did not return, though, in their hearts, neither 
wished his return. They felt instinctively that his return 
would set a period to their present state ; their next state 
might be better or worse, but it would not be the same. 
The first days of the betrothal come but once, and they 
hedged them jealously from the world. Dorothy would 
not let him make their engagement known beyond the 
little company of their friends, and made him pledge each 
of them to secrecy, for a time yet. She said she knew it 
must come ; she would have to be congratulated ; she 
would have to see her engagement take its place among 
the gossip of the town, in the news of the day : but she 
was not ready for that yet. It was only one degree from 
having to feel, as she knew she would be made to feel, that 
a marriage was just a marriage — an interesting public 
function, surrounded by the usual circumstance of ushers, 
orange flowers, white silk, carriages, subdued whispers, 
rapturous comment, Lohengrin, and all the rest of it. 
She might as well be a statistic, and have done with it. 
She admitted that their marriage would be in the census ; 
but she was willing to postpone her sense of its civic 
importance. 

Sometimes in their rides long silences would fall, and 
perhaps they communicated with each other most fully in 
these. But they liked to speak of the time when a little 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 351 

turn, one way or the other, might have lost them to each 
other, as it seemed. 

Dorothy would not admit that any chance could have 
been strong enough really to keep them apart; upon 
which Philip asked her what she said to the chance which 
she had given herself to accept Jasper. 

" Suppose I hadn't come along ? Suppose Vertner 
hadn't let on what an extra-abused fellow I was ? It's 
even betting what answer he would have got." 

" Well, he hasn't come back for it," suggested Dor- 
othy. 

"No; but if he had?" 

" I gave myself a week," she said demurely. 

" Do you mean that you gave me a week ? Take care ! 
I sha'n't believe that you were spending all your time dis- 
liking my part in the row with Jasper." 

" Oh, you may believe what you like," she rejoined, 
flicking her horse with the quirt Philip had given her. 

But, at another time, when they were sitting before 
the fire in her own home, she told him that it was really 
he who had gone nearest to make the impossibility of 
their not coming together possible. What did he say to 
the extreme folly of telling a young woman he loved her, 
and asking her in the same moment to understand that 
the fact wasn't to count? To be sure, he had suddenly 
thought better of this absurdity. It was a great point that 
he had thought better of it. But why ? 

A sick feeling stole over Philip as he parried this 

question, so obvious, so just, for the dozenth time, with a 

weary joke. It reappeared with the haunting effect of a 

threat. Must this ghost always stand at his- elbow? 

Might he not better tell her the whole story of his temp- 
23 



352 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

tation and his fall, and throw herself on her mercy, and 
her belief in him ? 

But he remembered Maurice, who would be so far too 
much involved in anything he might try to say. He could 
not wound the faith in her father, which he had given so 
much to preserve. He wished that Maurice would at 
least take the action which was now a matter of days, and 
which could not be much longer postponed. And he 
wished Jasper would return. There came a point in all 
threatening discomforts where all his thoughts and desires 
about them resolved themselves into a single longing to 
have done with them. 

When he and Maurice met in Dorothy's jDresence, now, 
they avoided each other's eye. Philip felt degraded by 
their common secret. He saw that he must tell Dorothy 
what he had done if the present situation did not come 
to an end soon of itself. 



XXVI. 



Margaret clung to her husband, as Jasper left them 
and took the path back into the woods. She looked wist- 
fully into his eyes. " Tell me it isn't true ! " she whis- 
pered huskily. " Say that he is wrong ! He would say 
his worst. I know that. James, tell me that it isn't 
true ! " 

Deed was silent. He watched Jasper's form slowly 
disappearing among the pines, in the twilight, with blaz- 
ing eyes. He took his breath shortly. 

"True?" he asked from his absorption. He stroked 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 353 

her head absently. "What true, dear? Scoundrel!" he 
muttered. 

" What he said — that you — you — ?" 

" That I pledged bonds left with me in trust to raise 
money to pay Philip ? Yes ; it's true," he said, clenching 
his hands, and staring over her head at the point where 
Jasper had vanished among the trees. He was less than 
half conscious of making the confession, which he had 
considered so often and painfully ; but at her shrinking 
from him he knew that he had told her, and that he was 
alone with her knowledge of him. " Do you object?" he 
asked abruptly. 

The soreness of his spirit spoke. Every nerve in him 
ached from the interview which he had just cut short 
fiercely with a word. 

She could have comforted him, without a backward 
look on the story Jasper had told, and he would have 
blessed her ; and, later, he would have humbled himself 
before her with the truth. At that moment the-Jiand of 
pure kindness must have been a pain, and the probe, even 
in the hands of love, was torture. "Do you object ? " he 
repeated, as she did not answer. 

" Object ? " she cried. " my husband ! " 

She saw that he was in the mood when he must be 
hard with the person nearest him. She had just seen 
him tormented beyond endurance. She meant to be gen- 
tle, to be tolerant ; but she could not be silent. 

" I see," exclaimed Deed. " You needn't say it. 
Well, the law objects, too. You are in excellent com- 
pany." 

" James, how should I care for that ! You were in 
the right. I believe it. I only ask you to say it, and I 



35-i BENEFITS FORGOT. 

will believe you. Can't you see that I can't bear to think 
you in the wrong ? " 

"Ah, yes," he exclaimed sadly. "You care too much 
for the right to bear to think that." 

" That is true," she said simply. " I don't think you 
could want me to deny that, James, though you say it as 
if it were an accusation. You mean that I care for that 
first, and then for you. I care for you as you are right, 
the right. Can't you see how it's all the same thing? 
You have become my right. James, didn't I take you 
for that in marrying you ? " 

" Eeserving your own definitions," said Deed, bitterly. 

" I don't define," she murmured entreatingly ; " I only 
ask you to say." 

" And I can't say. Nothing that I could say could 
make what I have done seem right to your ideas of right. 
You would be forced to condemn just as I should be eter- 
nally forced to do it, in the same situation. It's tempera- 
ment ; it's character ! " he cried miserably. 

The twilight had deepened during the brief minutes 
in which Jasper had told his father that he knew the 
secret of the hypothecation of Iron Silver stock at Lead- 
ville, and had given him his choice between retreat from 
the sale to Snell, and an immediate publication of the 
facts of the hypothecation in the newspapers. He had 
taken his scornful answer away with him into the dusk. 
The darkness was now falling about them, touched only 
by the last reluctances of the day, which the reflected 
glimmer from the white hills detained vaguely still. 

" Yes, yes," assented Margaret ; " I know. But what 
can matter if we love each other — if we trust each 
other ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 355 

" Trust, Margaret ! Did you trust me when I sold the 
ranch away from this fellow ? Would you trust me now, 
if I were to tell you how I used this mining stock out of 
a need of the same kind ? I am made that way, Margaret. 
I couldn't have helped doing it any more than you can 
help loathing it now," he repeated. 

" I don't loathe it," she said patiently. " I am sorry 
— sorry. What you say about the other — yes, I see, now, 
that I was wrong, or unhappy, or — I don't know what — 
in my way of asking you not to do that. Perhaps I shall 
never be able to find words or ways — whatever it is with 
which other women explain such things," she went on, 
with a little note of humility in her voice which touched 
Deed indescribably, and caused him to take her hand in 
his in a quick pressure as she stole it gently, almost tim- 
idly, towards him. " But, James," she continued quickly, 
" we were not married then. I am your wife now. That 
has changed everything. I can't judge you. I am part 
of you. If you have done what — what he said, the error, 
the sin, if there is any, is mine, too. Let us help each 
other about it, James. Tell me, how was it ? " 

The moon stole an edge above the summit of Monk's 
Head, etching the dusky outline of the mountain against 
its peeping disk. The light kindled along the snowy 
flanks of the opposite hills, and ran tremulously into the 
black depths of the canon beyond. He told her of the 
means by which he had paid Philip, as they stood in the 
broadening glow. 

" But you meant to do no wrong," she said as he 
finished. 

" Oh, meant ! " he exclaimed. " Do you think they 
will care at Leadville what I meant to do ?" 



356 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Perhaps not," she said, " but I care. If it had not 
been for the chance of this snow, which might have hap- 
pened to any one, you would have sold the * Lady Boun- 
tiful ' to those people at Burro Peak, and no one would 
have been the worse for what you did." She said this 
stoutly, as much by way of trying to believe it for herself 
as to comfort him. But her conscience forced her to add 
immediately, " But it was an awful mistake — it was — it 
was not right, was it, James ? " She looked up into his 
eyes, questioning him doubtfully, as if she had never 
known days in which problems like this were decided 
with instinctive confidence within her own breast. 

" No, Margaret ; no. It was like other things — a mud- 
dle of right and wrong, I suppose ; but certainly not right. 
Perhaps I might say for what I did that it wouldn't be 
fair to judge it in the gross. But that's the best I could 
say. I did it because I had to, Margaret. I didn't mean 
one thing or the other, as you call it. The position in 
which Philip placed me was intolerable. I changed it ; I 
righted it. God knows with what show of justice." He 
turned away. They stood for a moment silent. Then he 
said : "Does it not seem my destiny, Margaret dear, to 
hurt you, and always at the tenderest point ? I seem to 
have to do the things which must wound you deepest, and 
then to have to hurt you deeper by wickedly trying to 
make you pay for my error through your sensitiveness to 
it. From the hour that I borrowed money at Leadville 
on those bonds which didn't belong to me, I have been 
ashamed to face myself ; what I did has seemed to debase 
me deeper and deeper every day. I have hated myself. 
I have wished to tell you. But when you question my 
act, ever so gently, I must make you suffer for my pain 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 357 

about it. It is because I know the things I do for what 
they are that I can't bear your sure eyes on them. If I 
believed myself as much in the right as I am always ready 
to say I am, I could not shrink from your brave judg- 
ments." 

" James, it isn't for me to judge. But, don't you 
see, dear — what you say gives me courage to ask — that — " 
she hesitated. 

" What, Margaret ? " he asked gently. 

" That — that all you have done — all that you have 
been led to do since Jasper turned false, is all of one 
piece, really ? " 

" No," said Deed, gravely ; " I don't see that." 

" But I do ! James," she cried, " what you did to 
Jasper was wrong — wrong from the beginning ! " 

Deed frowned heavily. " Margaret ! I thought you — " 
He bit his lip. 

" That I said I was mistaken in that ? In the way I 
chose to make you feel what I felt — yes. But in my feel- 
ing about it — oh, no, no, I was right ; and if in nothing 
else, then right in my instinct that it was wrong for you ! 
Poor James ! It has been wrong, has it not ? " She 
slipped her hand within his arm. He dropped the arm, 
and looked away towards the gilded white hills. But she 
went on, undaunted. " We have tried to cover it up in 
our happiness, these last few weeks. But it's true ; and I 
see now — I'm sure that you see now — that we must face 
it. Do you think I don't understand how, having done 
what you did with Jasper, what you did with Philip had 
to follow ? It was that I feared for you — all the endless 
consequences, all the suffering, all the remorse, all the 
snarl of wrong. I feared them for you, James, because 



358 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

I knew you — because — " her hand stole into his, and this 
time he held it fast — " I loved you ; and because I saw, 
oh, so clearly, how it would all be worse for you than for 
another man — how you would make it worse, because you 
would be trying always to burst your way through the 
misery; and because you would suffer more than other 
men from your failure, and — and your wounds. It was 
that that forced me to ask you not to do it ; and it's that 
that makes me ask you now, James, to undo it. Don't 
speak ! Don't say you won't or can't. You can, James, 
and you must I Can you wish to be subject forever to 
such attacks ? Jasper has to make them. They are in 
his nature ; and they are part of the sure result of what 
you did," she said bravely. She was launched now, and 
did not care what she said. " What you did to right 
yourself with Philip was wrong, of course; but it was not 
the first nor the chief wrong." She caressed his shoulder 
vaguely with the arm she ran about his neck. " What- 
ever you did, it all came from the other. It couldn't have 
happened if the other hadn't. And we must go back to 
that. I see now that we have been mistaken in pretend- 
ing to each other that that question is dead, and all its 
consequences buried. It can never die, James, until we 
face it together, and do what we still can." He turned 
and looked into her pleading face. " It lives between 
Jas}3er and you, and will always live until we have the 
courage to give up our wrongful right ; it lives between 
Philip and you, and perhaps that is past help, — perhaps 
that is to be our punishment, — but worse, much worse, it 
lives between us, James ; and we shall never be happy 
until it is dead and out of sight. Oh, I have been think- 
ing while we have been standing here ! I have been see- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 359 

ing, more than ever before, how different we are, how hard 
it will be, always, for us to understand each other, to make 
allowance, to remember that we love each other, and to 
keep that uppermost. But I have become sure that 
never, for either of us, is there to be peace until this is 
made right." 

Deed drew her to him, and folded her in his arms. 
" My wise, good Margaret ! " he said. " My gentle, sweet, 
just girl ! You said a little while ago that I was your 
right — that you had taken me for that. But you see, now, 
how I could never be that. My right is personal, whim- 
sical, fantastic, brutal, selfish. I construct it myself. I 
take it habitually, as if it were the one right in the world, 
and as if it might not be the wrong of a dozen other peo- 
ple. It is you who must be my right for the future ; and 
I will obey it humbly. Your right is certain because it is 
not yours — because it is the right of others. I will do 
what you say, Margaret." 

He bent and kissed her. Margaret touched her eyes 
hastily with her handkerchief. "And will you — will you 
restore the ranch to Jasper ? Will you give him back his 
share ? " 

Deed's brow knit darkly. " My girl, my girl," he ex- 
claimed in sadness, " you don't know what you ask ! " 

" But you would do that, surely. You would not hesi- 
tate now, would you, for any feeling of — -of — " 

Deed shook his head bitterly. " Is it a light feeling ? 
Do you think I could do it? Margaret, you don't 
think ! " An inflection of reproach stole into his voice. 

Her ear did not fail to note it. But she said : " I do ! 
I do ! It is because I think — and for you — that I beg it 
of you." 



360 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Her husband bit his lip. " It's preposterous, Marga- 
ret. Ask something reasonable. Would you have me 
humble myself before Jasper, noiv, after all that has 
passed — after to-day ? Would you have me go to him, — 
his father, — confess that I have been in the wrong from 
the beginning, and beg his permission to restore, to give 
back, what I stole from him ? I should be lying. I don't 
believe him in the right ; I believe him terribly in the 
wrong. But, besides, see what he must think — that I do 
it in fear of his vile threat ! Could you really wish that 
humiliation for me, Margaret? I don't believe it." 

" No ; we must wait, I see. We must make the other 
right. Then this will come right of itself. You must 
go back," she said. " You must find your way to Lead- 
ville the moment this snow releases us, and restore what 
you have borrowed." 

" Borrowed ? Do you think it is by that word they 
will know what I did at Leadville ? It will be a harsher 
word, Margaret — a word with a penalty." 

" Well, then," returned she, with a simplicity which at 
once appalled and enchanted him, " you must go back and 
make it right on those terms." 

He stared at her fascinated. " I will ! " he said at 
last. 

" I don't mean to urge you to anything your own 
judgment doesn't approve," she said, temporizing, as even 
a strong woman must before consequences which are to 
be wrought out beyond her sight in the man's world. 

" No, no ! It has been in my own mind a long time. 
I would have done it gladly long ago if I could have got 
out of this prison, and could have believed that I had a 
right to commit you to what must follow. I must have 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 361 

my own respect back again, Margaret. You are right. 
I will go to Leadville as soon as we can get away from 
this place, if Jasper does not contrive that I shall go earlier. 
And I will take the consequences." 

"And then — " She looked up into his eyes confi- 
dently, joyfully. 

" You mean Jasper ? " he asked, frowning. She 
nodded. He shook his head. 



XXVII. 



» Beatrice folded Margaret in her arms, and kissed 
her repeatedly, and took off her cloak, and asked her 
where she had been, when Deed brought her to the house 
one evening a week later. She said that Ned was down- 
town, and Mr. Deed was not to think of going on by the 
nine o'clock train to Leadville. She was charmed to keep 
Margaret while he went on ; but he must stay, too, for 
the night, at least. Ned would be back soon, and he was 
so anxious to see him. 

As she spoke Beatrice glanced from one to the other. 
In Margaret's face she thought she saw some of what she 
had expected — a development, a softening, an effect like 
that which photographers get from the process they call 
"toning." It was not merely that usual though inde- 
scribable difference which distinguishes the matron, how- 
ever recent, from the maid ; Margaret had changed almost 
in proportion to the area she had offered for change, 
almost in proportion to what Beatrice had always called 
to herself her " unmarriageableness." What she saw made 



362 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

her retract silently some things she had said to Vertner, 
but still left her wondering. Had Margaret contrived to 
attune herself to her husband, or had he, feeling the sacri- 
fice she had made in coming to him, at last, after what 
had happened, made the history of his sex memorable by 
shaping himself to her? Did they get along ? That was 
what she asked herself. She had decided that they did 
(Deed's face looked strangely sad and worn ; but that was, 
no doubt, the other matter), as she intercepted his answer 
to a glance from Margaret in the pause which fell at her 
hospitable entreaty; and yet — She went back to her 
old feeling that the difference between them was too 
irreconcilable, and that Margaret, of all persons, was the 
last to be able to reconcile it (it was always the woman 
who had to play that part in a marriage, and when the 
woman was wrong it was hopeless). She said, as these 
thoughts passed through her mind, that they had been 
greatly concerned lately when no one heard from them. 

Deed said yes, they had been snowed up. They had 
been unable to get out; they had feared their friends 
would be anxious. He gave this explanation like a lesson 
learned by rote. He was conscious that people would 
be curious ; it was necessary to supply an explanation for 
current use, and the simpler it was, and the sooner made, 
the better. Margaret glanced quickly at him as he spoke. 

He would not take off his overcoat in response to 
Beatrice's entreaties, and in a few moments rose, and 
made his farewell. Margaret followed him into the hall- 
way. She threw her arms about his neck. 

" James," she begged, through the lump that hung 
in her throat, "are we doing right? Or — no; of course 
we are doing right — but do you think — " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 363 

" Margaret ! " exclaimed he, reproachfully. He took 
down her hands, and gazed into her eyes by the dim light 
of the hall-lamp, under which they stood. " It isn't you 
who persuade me to falter, is it ? " 

" No, no. But it is so easy to persuade. It is you 
who have to act — to suffer. Perhaps I am wrong. Oh, 
think ! " 

" I have thought," he said soberly. " You are right. 
We are both right. We cannot do otherwise. Tell me, 
dearest," he whispered, stooping to her, " can we ? " Their 
eyes confronted in a look in which each seemed to search 
the other's soul. 

She turned away choking. " Go ! go ! " she cried in 
a stifled voice. She caught him to her, and kissed him 
once, twice, and held him to her in a ravenous embrace, 
from which it seemed she would never let him go. Then 
suddenly she pushed him away, and, putting her hands to 
her face, ran into the room where Beatrice awaited her. 

It was finally because she was ashamed of her coward- 
ice that she forced herself to look over the " Maverick 
Sentinel " the next morning. She glanced at the head- 
lines *vith a cowering heart ; and when she found noth- 
ing in them beyond the usual budget of snow-slides, 
murder trials, Washington gossip, European war-clouds, 
local news, mining and cattle notes, booms, and rumours 
of booms, she began to search again incredulously. Could 
it be that Jasper had held his hand ? She asked Vertner, 
in as steady a voice as she could command, — they were at 
breakfast, — if Mr. Jasper Deed was in town. 

"No," said Vertner. "Want to see him?" He 
smiled over at her, unscrupulously. She shook her head, 



364 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

without smiling. " No," he repeated ; " he isn't in town, 
and it's even up when he will be. He was going to be 
back in a week when he started, — that was the word he 
left, — and there was plenty to call him back. But it's 
nearer ten days, and no one's heard anything of him. I 
did think some of organizing a search expedition to go 
and find him one of these days when business was slack, 
but come to talk to the fellows in town about it, there 
seemed to be a general agreement that they hadn't lost 
Jasper Deed. I didn't know as I had myself, so I let it 
drop. But if you want to see him — " he offered, with 
twinkling eyes. 

" No, no," she said. And then she told him — there 
could be no harm if she did not tell his errand — of the 
visit he had paid them at Mineral Spings. Vertner 
pricked up his ears at the first words, and, at the end of 
her recital, was leaning forward with his face supported 
between his hands, listening in unconscious absorption. 
As she finished, he emitted a little whistle. 

" What a fellow ! " he exclaimed under his breath. 
" What a fellow ! Snow so deep the drummers didn't try 
to get out, you say ? Pass blocked ! Everything battened 
down for the winter ! Drifts, probably, until you couldn't 
rest. And that fellow fought his way over into the 
Springs and saw Deed ! My ! my ! but there was a rus- 
tler lost to the honest paths of speculation when that 
remarkable young man went into the business of being a 
confounded scoundrel ! Like to have him in partnership 
with me for a year with his claws cut. Wouldn't we 
make this old Centennial State hum! But what's be- 
come of him ? That's what I want to know. I believe I 
shall have to go after him, now. We can't leave a man 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 365 

with all that sand to die in a snow-drift. Come to think 
of it, there might be a chance to reform him if we could 
meet in a snow-drift — he underneath, and I on top — 
with a whiskey-flask. It would be a pretty triumph, lead- 
ing him home captive, warranted kind and gentle, and 
trained to go in harness. What a scoundrel ! I'm afraid 
he made Deed unhappy," he said suddenly. 

Vertner had executed a circumscribed war-dance in 
their bedroom when Beatrice had told him of Deed's 
safety, on his return the night before. He had said that 
Deed was a fraud not to wait ; and then had said that he 
should start for Leadville in the morning to hunt him up. 
He had something to tell him. But in the morning, when 
Beatrice asked him if she should pack his bag, he told her 
that he had decided not to go — not to-day, anyway. Deed 
would probably find out at Leadville for himself what he 
had to tell him, and it would be all the better. 

Margaret's eyes filled with tears alarmingly at his sug- 
gestion, and he shied hastily away from it, and asked her 
if she wouldn't go with them on a little picnic they had 
arranged for that day. They were all going to the Iron 
Mine. Oh, yes ; certainly she would go. But there was 
no question about it. Margaret protested. It seemed 
wicked to be enjoying herself, or even to permit herself 
the color of enjoyment, while Deed was away from her 
on such an errand. But Beatrice's assurance to Vertner 
that she would go, and the " talking to " which Beatrice 
gave her when he had left them, silenced her. 

She was full of her own thoughts as she prepared for 
the long drive to the Iron Mine ; and they were not all of 
Deed in Leadville. 

She must meet people since she had come back. Some 



366 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

of those she had known during her earlier stay were sure 
to be of the picnic party. She must bear to guess the 
comment that had gone on in her absence from the looks 
she would receive. Ah, well, she did not care. There 
were other things to think of. Yet she caught herself 
w r ondering if Dr. Ernfield would be riding with them to 
Iron Mine. She had not dared to ask Beatrice who was 
going ; she had not even asked how he was, though she 
washed much to know. 

She recalled the occurrences of her former stay in 
Maverick, one by one. Some of them — the days of her 
courtship, for example, when Deed and she had seen each 
other daily, in perfect love and confidence — were sweet 
recollections. But others crowded these out. The morn- 
ing when she had so nearly sacrificed his love for her 
to save him from himself, and had failed ; the desolate 
days which followed, — Ernfield, her flight, her happy 
flight from this house to which she had come back again, 
— these were haunting memories. 

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining with 
that effect of never having shone before, mingled with 
the sober purpose of going on shining just so forever, 
which Colorado knows, and which all December picnics 
should arrange for. The fact that the entire sum of the 
grey, or doubtful, or lowering days in the course of a 
Colorado year would not make up a fortnight, mysteri- 
ously seems not to dull the edge of one's pleasure in each 
new sun-soaked day. Dorothy was saying something like 
this to Philip as they rode out together to meet the party. 
Vertner had brought Philip the news of his father's arrival 
in town, and had had hard work, as he told Beatrice after- 
wards, to restrain him from following Deed to Leadville, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 367 

forthwith. It was only by representing the case to Dor- 
othy that he had succeeded in keeping him for the pic- 
nic, he told his wife. He did not mean that he tad told 
Dorothy anything ; he had merely indicated to her the 
propriety of his remaining, and he had remained. 

Philip rode by Dorothy's side with a happy smile on 
his lips. His heart stirred joyously in time to the hoof- 
beats of their horses. To know that his father was found, 
to know that he must by this have learned that he had a 
loyal sou, was cause enough for throwing up one's hat, 
and to turn his own trouble idle and foolish. As they 
rode, Dorothy would occasionally look across the space 
between their horses and smile with him ; and at these 
times a gleam of intelligence, of sympathy, would light in 
her eyes, which seemed to double his happiness. His head 
swam with it. He would not talk, and Dorothy also kept 
silence; but when their eyes met, Philip thought how, 
with every look, she endeared herself more to him, and 
how she must make her way into his father's heart. How 
his father would like her ! She should make up for many 
things to him. She should be a daughter to him, not in 
the conventional sense, but truly. He fancied her replac- 
ing Jasper in his father's heart ; he imagined her atoning 
for that loss in so far as any one could. He knew that 
must always remain an unhealed sorrow, an incurable bit- 
terness ; Jbut she could console it. 

When he met Margaret for the first time, a few mo- 
ments later, he seemed to see something in her face which 
told him that his father must already be as happy as the 
love of woman could make him. He had had his one 
glimpse of her on the staircase of the hotel at Leadville, 
as she was leaving it, a bride; but her face had been 
24 



368 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

veiled. He saw instantly that she was good. She was 
such a woman as he could fancy his father caring for. 
He saw why he had married her. These perceptions 
passed through his miud rapidly as he flung himself from 
his horse, and took her hand warmly. 

Margaret had imagined this meeting. She supposed 
she must speak to him ; but she had intended to make it 
a formal matter. She could not believe him as much at 
fault as her husband did; but his attitude bound her, she 
felt, and she must be the more careful since he was not 
by. Poor Margaret ! Her judiciousness was always a 
failure. It was not less so in this case, for Philip's 
warmth disarmed her, and with the whole party halted 
and looking on she could not treat him with obvious cold- 
ness. She could only say to herself that, at least, it was 
not Jasper. Even her husband could not feel Philip to 
be as much to blame as his brother. And, before she 
knew it, a wave of tenderness for Philip came over her, 
like the tenderness she had felt towards him when Deed, 
for so different a reason, had left her before. He was at 
least his son. She had not yet found courage to glance 
at him. She wondered if he looked like him. She made 
herself glance down into his honest eyes, and suddenly 
believed in him. He was like his father ; his eyes were 
particularly like his. She returned his hand-clasp. 

" I have hoped we should meet," he said. 

" Yes," she murmured breathlessly. 

" Will you tell me how my father is ? You can't know 
how anxious we have been about him — about you." 

" He's not well. He has been — he has been troubled. 
You knew that he had gone on to Leadville ? " 

" Yes, yes. But he is coming back ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 3^9 

" Soon, I hope." She lowered her eyes. 

" Only soon. Then I must run up. I had hoped he 
would be back to-morrow. Vertner assured me that he 
would." 

" Oh, don't do that ! " she exclaimed hastily. 

" Don't ? " he hesitated. " You mean— No ; I sup- 
pose father hasn't forgiven me," he said gloomily. Then, 
with recovered buoyancy : " But that's almost part of his 
fineness, isn't it? If I had done what he supposes, he 
ought to hate me. But does he still— or, no, I oughtn't to 
ask that ; it isn't fair ; perhaps I ought not even to have 
spoken to you ; but I saw you. I couldn't help it. You 
can't think what finding father again is to me— to all of 
us. It's mixed up with so many things. But it doesn't 
need to be mixed up with anything to make me glad. 
He's not like every father, quite, you know ; he's not been 
at all like other fathers in his goodness to me. And he's 
such a man ! " 

The tone in which he said it sent a thrill leaping 
through her pulses, and it was hard for her not to shout 
what she answered a moment later, in an agitated whis- 
per, struggling to control herself. 

"I know your father," she said. She took a hand 
from her rein, and offered it to him, in a torrent of feel- 
ing for which she could find no words. He caught the 
hand in a grasp that hurt her as he wrung it. 

" I believe you do," he said almost reverently. 

The cavalcade had passed them as they paused to- 
gether. She touched her horse and, with a single glance 
at him, started in pursuit of the party at a gallop. Philip 
joined Dorothy, and they cantered on slowly after the 
company together, talking of what had happened. 



370 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

They caught up with the others in the gorge making 
into the hills outside the town — the gorge through which 
Margaret and Ernfield had once ridden on their way to 
the neighbouring summit. Cutter, Beatrice, Yertner, 
Ernfield, and Mrs. Felton were among the group in ad- 
vance. Margaret, who had rejoined the company before 
them, they perceived riding by Vertner's side. Every one 
save Margaret and Ernfield appeared in a festival mood ; 
and shouts and laughter echoed from wall to wall of the 
gulch, and floated up into the still, keen air, like a kind 
of offering to the perfection of the day. Ernfield was 
with Beatrice, far in advance, and they saw him stoop to 
her in quiet talk. Beatrice would sometimes turn in her 
saddle, and laugh gaily at something Cutter and Mrs. Fel- 
ton, who seemed to be having a pleasant time together, 
would call out from behind. But at these times Ernfield 
did not turn. Philip guessed that he was willing to avoid 
Margaret's eye, and Margaret, for her part, kept in the 
rear with Vertner. Ernfield had joined the van of the 
cavalcade after it was in motion, and they had not en- 
countered yet. Both were willing to postpone the meeting. 

The gulch narrowed presently, and forced them out of 
its bottom to a narrow path along the ledge which hung 
above it. Opposite them a gash in the hill, the effusion 
of a mass of green earth upon the rocky slope, an aban- 
doned cabin, told the familiar story of failure, the little 
daily tragedy of disappointment. The memory of another 
mine, which was always with Philip now, but had seemed 
to leave him in the happy hours since he had known his 
father to be found, returned upon him with a fresh pain. 
It was a richer mine of which he was thinking. He had 
been about to say to himself more fortunate. But was it 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 371 

fortunate ? If he could choose, would it not be his wish, 
now, that the ore-bearing vein in the " Little Cipher " 
might never have been opened ? He could not wish that 
it should give out now ; his future had been wagered on it. 
But what would he not have given to know that he had 
dreamed the assay, the exploration of the mine, the finger- 
ing of the ore in his own hands ? He wished heartily that 
he had never leased the mine to the Ejans, who must go 
blundering about and snatch a fortune out of the bowels 
of the earth, to show his conscience the way to the hell in 
which it now lived. 

" Poor fellows ! " said Dorothy, looking across at the 
deserted mine, as they rode slowly along the path in single 
file. " What work, what hopes, they must have put into 
that mine ! It is hard, isn't it, to think that where one 
succeeds a thousand must fail ? It must be so, I suppose ; 
but what a price for the success ! " 

" Do you mean that these men — the men who worked 
that mine — and others like them all over Colorado, and 
elsewhere, really pay for the lucky fellow's good fortune ? " 
asked Philip, turning in his saddle (he was riding in ad- 
vance) to look back at her. " That's a hard thought for 
the lucky fellow, isn't it?" 

" Oh, no, Philip ; I didn't mean that." She saw what 
he was thinking of, and hesitated a moment before trying 
to say just what she did mean. " It's Nature that pays. 
I suppose we must think that. The men will feel that 
they have played against Nature and lost ; and that is 
right, too, no doubt. Some must lose ; the chances are 
infinitely in favour of loss. Every one knows that who 
sinks a shaft or digs a tunnel, I fancy. And then some 
must win. That is natural. The men who fail don't 



372 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

grudge the successes. I think they like to know of them. 
It is a comfort to them to know that there is some success 
somewhere. But it lays a great responsibility on the suc- 
cessful ones, doesn't it ? " 

" Yes," said Philip. 

They rode on in silence. The hoofs of their horses 
seemed to make a loud voice as they struck on the rocky 
path. The others had been moving more rapidly while 
they talked, and the hoof-beats of the animals in advance, 
as they died away, seemed to leave them more solitary in 
this lonely path between the hills than if a party had not 
been within hail. 

" Philip," she said softly, not guessing his thoughts. 

" Yes." 

" Wasn't it fortunate — Mr. Cutter and I were talking 
of it the other day — that it was the ' Little Cipher ' which 
turned out so rich ? " 

" Why ? " asked Philip, turning suddenly to face her 
again. 

" Why, only think if it had been the ' Pay Ore,' and 
you had been obliged to give it up to your brother— after 
— after all that has happened, and after your making it a 
success. Fancy your having to think that all the work you 
had given to your own mine had come to nothing ; and 
the same work in his had brought him a fortune. Fancy 
your having to know that you had done it for him. Why, 
Philip, when I think of your being forced to go to him in 
the face of all the wrong and suffering and insult he has 
heaped on you, and having to say— b-r-r-r ! " She shud- 
dered prettily. 

It had come. He felt now as if he had paltered and 
doubted and hesitated to his shame. How could he have 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 373 

believed that she would not find a forgiveness in that 
heavenly sympathy for the means by which he had won 
her ? These gentle words — the first in comment on that 
bitter situation which had found their way to any lips — 
were like dew in a thirsty land to him. She must know. 
He would not wrong her by another moment's shameful 
silence. His secret choked him. Their love seemed 
worthless while it remained between them. 

" It would have been an odious position," he said, with 
an effort at lightness. " Perhaps a man might be forgiven 
for shirking it." 

" You mean he might send some one else to tell 
him ? " 

" No ; I suppose I was thinking that he might do 
nothing at all." 

" Wait, and let his brother find out, do you mean?" 

" Well, yes ; something like that." 

" But that would only be postponing it. His brother 
would be sure to learn of it sooner or later. And then he 
would have his silence to accuse him of. If one had a 
brother like Jasper, I don't think one would like to give 
him an accusation — even an accusation like that, where 
no real wrong would have been done him. Do you ? " 

" I think I should let him find out," said Philip. He 
was speaking with his head half turned toward her, and 
with one hand resting on his pony's flank behind the sad- 
dle. This kept his body swaying with the animal's for- 
ward stride. The others came into sight for a moment 
at a bend in the road, and vanished again. They probably 
thought to do the lovers a kindness in leaving them to 
themselves. " Even suppose he never found out ? " he 
pursued after a moment, as he turned and leaned forward 



374 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

to adjust the pony's forelock, which had not "been properly 
smoothed under the head-strap. 

" But I can't imagine that. His brother would hear. 
He would know that the strike had been made in his 
mine." 

" He mightn't know which was his. You can imagine 
that, surely." 

Something in his voice startled her. " Why, Philip — 
but what do you mean ? " 

They had emerged upon a vast open green upland, and 
their horses by a common impulse changed their pace to 
a canter. The others were visible now far in advance, 
upon the road winding as far as the eye could reach be- 
tween the grassy acres of the park. They cantered along 
side by side in the sunlight, taking the pure air of the 
table-land on their faces. 

The interval gave Philip time. But he could not 
think. Her smiling face, as she glanced towards him in 
their buoyant flight, daunted him. Would she smile so 
when he had told her ? He was suddenly afraid to speak. 

But as the animals fell into a walk, " Suppose his 
brother didn't know," he repeated ; and this time she was 
sure of the strange inflection. 

She stared at him. " It would be an awful tempta- 
tion," she said under her breath. She gazed thoughtfully 
into his eyes. He dropped them. 

" Yes," he said. 

He kep't his eyes upon the moving roadway. He felt 
her glance upon him. She was reading him. He knew 
it. Would she never break the silence ? Then at his side 
he heard a low moan — not like Dorothy's voice — a moan 
of perception and reproach and heartbreaking grief. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 375 

" Oil ! " she murmured desolately. ',< Oh-h-h ! " The 
wail trembled from between her trembling lips ; it seemed 
torn from her soul. She paled. He saw her sway in her 
saddle, and stretched out a quick hand to stay her fall. 
She waved him off brokenly. " No, no ! Don't, please ! " 

" Dorothy — " he began. 

She commanded herself, and looked into his eyes again 
with a look of love and longing and despair, with a face 
of sorrow and indignation, and with scorn and pity, which 
shook his heart. 

" How could you ! " she cried in a stifled voice, through 
the tears that began to come. " How could you ! " 

" It was for you," he said. 

" For me I Philip, don't say it ! " 

" But for whom else, for what else ? You can't think 
that I would do it only for money, for revenge ! It was 
for you — only for you." 

" And you think that makes it better ! Oh, what can 
you have imagined me ! How little — little you have un- 
derstood me ! Better — Philip ! " she choked. 

" It was a question between losing you and doing it. 
I did it. It was wrong, it was wicked, it was base, if you 
like. You may think what you will of it. I don't de- 
fend it. But I did it for you. And I would do it 
again." 

" Don't ! " she cried again, shrinking away from him. 
" Oh, no one could accuse you as you accuse yourself. 
Knowing this — this thing that you have let yourself do to 
be all you say, how — Philip, hozv could you stain our — 
our love with it ! I don't know what you mean. How 
could it have been ? Did I make you do this ? " she cried 
suddenly. She stretched out her hand towards him. 



376 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Was it my folly or vanity, in letting Jasper go on, that 
forced you to it — that seemed to give this a reason ? " 
Philip shook his head. " Oh, no, no ! Of course it 
couldn't have been that. But why — " She stopped 
short. "What difference can it make? It's done — it's 
done ! And for me — for our love ! Oh, how could you 
hope that any happiness could be bought with such 
wrong? Can't you see how it soils and degrades and 
shames every moment that we have ever had with each 
other? Can't you see how it must kill me to think 
that we have come by all that has seemed so sweet 
and precious and good through a fraud — through a 
trick?" 

" No," said Philip, stoutly ; " I don't see that. I 
won't see it. If we really love each other, that counts. 
But nothing else counts. I can make this right. I have 
taken, I can restore." He said it, though he knew other- 
wise. " Why, Dorothy, no one knows. And no one can 
ever know. I see that you look on me as a common rob- 
ber. But it's not so. They were both my mines. Jasper 
sent me money to work a claim for him. The money 
went into the common fund. I don't know which of the 
two mines it was used for. I shall never know. When I 
began to work with his money, I said to myself that I 
should look upon the ' Little Cipher ' as his. But both 
still belonged to me. I did all the work on them. They 
existed only through the work I directed upon them. 
Jasper never thought anything of his chances at Pinon. 
It was like giving a man $500 to place on a horse for you, 
or to buy a lottery-ticket with. And I thought so little 
of the chances, one way or the other, after the first 
month, that I swear to you it was never in my thoughts 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 377 

which claim was his and which was mine. Legally they 
were both mine. In fact, they were both mine, not only 
for all practical purposes, but actually. For Jasper had 
never bought anything from me. He had given me some 
money to expend in working a claim." Dorothy opened 
her mouth, but he went on with a gesture : " Yes ; I know. 
It's true. Don't suppose I shirked the truth for a mo- 
ment. The difference is no difference. In my con- 
science Jasper was the owner of the ' Little Cipher ' and 
all that might come from it. He is so yet. I don't dis- 
pute it. It has never been present in my mind in any 
other way since the temptation to keep silence, and let 
him take the other for his, came upon me. Since you 
must judge me, it is fair that you should know how it has 
been with me. If it is worse to have done what I did 
knowingly, I tell you freely that I did it in the face of 
the knowledge that not all the deeds and registrations 
and formal evidence of ownership in the world could 
make Jasper more the owner of the 'Little Cipher' than 
he was through my word to myself. I know it ; but I did 
it — I mustn't tell you why or how — for you." His voice 
dropped, and as their horses went slowly along, he leaned 
over, and took the hand she had let fall by her side. 
" Does that count for nothing with you, Dorothy ? " 

She had been listening to him wearily, wondering! y, 
hoping against hope that he could excuse himself, that he 
could make the obvious wrong seem right. But at this 
she started as if waking herself from a sleep, and an- 
swered : " Oh, for too much ! Too much ! " She released 
her hand quietly. Philip felt a shock go through him. 
" Every word you say makes it a more impossible thing 
for you to have done, Philip. And to do it, above all, in 



378 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

the name of our love ! You had an opportunity such as 
comes to a man in a thousand. You could have been 
strong ; you could have turned from that awful tempta- 
tion, and I should have loved you for it as women have 
loved heroes and martyrs. I understand the temptation. 
It was cruel ; even leaving all this miserable thought of 
me out of it, it was horribly cruel. I said how it would 
seem very hard to do right in such a case. That was my 
first thought. But, Philip, can you think that it 
makes it easier for me to think you have failed — to know 
that it was hard ? Because the right is hard, the wrong 
is not good, is it ? And surely the right is dearer for be- 
ing difficult. Any man might have resisted if it had not 
been bitter to be strong. Only such a man as I have be- 
lieved you could be great enough for the noble thing that 
was open to you." 

" Stop ! Stop ! " he cried, in pain. 

" No ; let me speak now, please. The truth is better. 
Philip," she cried, " when I think of you with those 
two mines in your possession, with the knowledge that 
one of them held a fortune, and that the other was a 
mere opening in the ground ; and when I think of you 
with the other knowledge that the one that held a fortune 
was your brother's, for your conscience, and the empty 
one, still only for your conscience, belonged to you, and 
that no one knew this — no one!" — she drew a deep 
breath — " when I think of that, and remember that that 
brother had wronged you to the death ; that he had made 
it seem right to rob him by robbing you ; that he had 
driven your father to desperation, and brought you to 
poverty; when I think of all those things, and see the 
splendid, generous, heroic right you might have done, and 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 379 

have to know that you chose to do this — oh, if I could 
have died before I knew it ! " 

A convulsive sob escaped her. She pressed her cheeks 
rapidly and repeatedly with her handkerchief. When 
she looked at him again it was with streaming eyes. 
" Say you were not in your right mind, that you did it in 
error ! Say anything rather than leave me to believe what 
I must ! It wasn't you ! Philip ! Was not the man I 
have known you for too proud ? Would he not have seen 
how the very security with which he might take, and keep 
silence, forced him to hold his hand ? And would he not 
have felt, proudly, that every one's ignorance of his duty, 
and the infinite delicacy that ignorance forced upon 
him — yes, that the mere thread which bound must be 
stronger for him than the strongest bond, because it 
bound him to himself? Philip, say you did not do 
it!" 

" I can't ! I can't ! " he cried. " It's true ! " 

She gazed at him with eyes of unspeakable reproach ; 
and he dropped the eyes he had fixed upon hers while she 
spoke with the fascination of a criminal who hears his 
sentence. The party in advance had almost disappeared. 
The wide plain, hemmed in by hills, seemed a world, in 
which he and she alone existed. She checked her horse, 
and held out her hand. 

" Good-bye, then." 

"Good-bye?" he exclaimed, stupefied. 

" Did you think we could go on ? " she asked sadly. 
" Did you think it could all be as it was ? No ; it is ended 
for us. Good-bye," she repeated. The tears fell from 
her eyes in a rain, but there was no relenting in her face. 
" Give me my ring," she said dully. 



380 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

He stared. "Dorothy," he burst out, "you can't! 
You won't ! " 

" I must." 

" I have wronged Jasper. I confess it. Nothing that 
he has done excuses it. It makes it worse. I own it. 
But I can right that. I will. Dorothy, surely — surely 
this need not touch us ! " 

" Oh, what do I care for Jasper? " she cried in misery. 
" It is for you I care, and you have lost yourself to me. 
It isn't the wrong to him ! It is the wrong to yourself, to 
me, to all that we — to all that has been. Oh, is it for me 
to show you such a thing ? You have murdered our 
love. All the atonements in the world can't change 
that." 

She buried her face in her hands. Her horse stamped 
an impatient foot, and swung his head free of the rein. 

" You despise me, you hate me ; I see that" exclaimed 
Philip. " But you sha'n't throw me off. You sha'n't 
raise me to such a happiness as you have let me know to 
cast me back. You should have thought of that before 
you stretched out your hand to lift me up. You should 
have known that I am not made of the stuff that bears. 
I can't bear this. I won't. Dorothy, girl," — his voice 
fell to the note of tenderness, — " I can't do without you. 
You have taught me not to be able to do without you. 
You won't do this thing. Oh, my God, could I live and 
know that you were lost to me — and lost through Jasper ? 
Have you thought of that? Can you think that I could 
bear to know that, after all that has gone and passed, it 
is Jasper who parts us ? You see how it can't be." 

" Give me my ring, please," she said, not coldly or 
hardly, but resolutely. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 3gl 

He tore it from his finger. " As you wish," he said 
with blazing eyes. And then, with cold courtesy : " You 
won't want me to go on with you. I will wait here until 
I see you with the rest." 

" Philip ! " she trembled. She reached out her 
hand. 

He would not see it. He leaned forward and gave her 
the reins she had allowed to slip from her. He lifted 
his sombrero. 

" Good-bye," he said coldly. 

She gave one glance at him. Her mouth twitched 
pitifully. Then she struck the pony a sharp blow with 
her quirt. The beast leaped forward. 

Philip watched her steadfastly until she had melted 
into the dust-cloud which indicated the position of the 
picnic party. He knit his brow upon his straining eyes, 
and bit his lip fiercely as he gazed. When he had seen 
the last of her he whirled his horse, and dug his spurs 
into the animal's flanks with a wild sob of pain. 



XXVIII. 



Veetker took the picnic party over the entire Iron 
Mine, inexorably, when they came to it. They watched 
the drilling ; a blasting was set off for them ; they rode in 
the ore-cars ; they clambered down ladders into black pits, 
where only the candles lighted them ; they clambered up 
again; they crouched and crawled and stumbled after 
their guide through galleries and passages which never 
ended; and four of the party were conscious of it all. 



382 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Dorothy and Margaret and Ernfield were thinking of other 
things. 

Margaret sat down in her old room, when she was back 
again that evening, and wrote Deed a long letter, begging 
him to return, and tore it up. 

Dorothy, on her return, found her father in his study 
chair. She curled her arms about him, and asked him 
without preface if he would not give up his charge at 
once, and leave Maverick — forever. The blood tingled in 
his veins, and he drew a long breath. The relief of re- 
ceiving the proposal at last from her silenced all speech for 
a moment. He had paltered with the need of breaking it 
to her, he had postponed the evil day through the forbear- 
ance of the bishop, with the fear of what she must feel, of 
what she must say ; and while he waited, the difficulty 
was solved for him. For the instant he was too happy in 
the fact to question occasions or causes. 

" Why, I don't know, Dorothy," he said, endeavouring 
to hide his pleasure ; " if you don't like Maverick, I dare 
say I could find reasons for not liking it, too. In fact, 
now I think of it, I've been impatient and restless here for 
some time. Yes, dear," he said, patting her hand ; " since 
you wish it, let us go." 

" How good you are, papa ! I knew you would say so. 
And where shall we go ? " 

" Why, that's for you to say, partly, isn't it ? " 

" But I can't call you to a new parish. I'm not a ves- 
try or a church committee. I wish I were. You would 
have ten thousand a year for your salary, and have all the 
things you have to go without now, — poor papa ! — and 
never do anything you didn't want to." 

" What a picture ! But I thought we were all to revel 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 383 

in something of that sort, without the assistance of church 
vestries, in that fine future of your own that you've planned. 
I never consented to it, you know. . I never agreed to play 
the part you've assigned me in your drama of two happy 
people and another." 

" Oh, don't speak of that, papa ! " she cried, stooping 
over him, and burying her face. " Don't speak of it ! " 

" Why — why — " he exclaimed, in alarm, " what is the 
matter, my girl? Have you and Philip been — what is it? 
Tell me, child." A stern and impatient note came into 
his voice. 

" Oh, I can't tell you ! It isn't anything that I can 
tell." 

" Nonsense, Dorothy ! Don't make all this trouble 
about a lovers' quarrel, child. Do you suppose two lovers 
never quarrel? Do you suppose two lovers never quar- 
relled before ? " 

She lifted her tear-stained face from his breast, and 
looked in her father's eyes, as she said, " This is not a 
quarrel." A look passed over her face such as she might 
have given Philip if he had been before her — grieving and 
miserable, but proud, self-contained, resolute. Her father 
did not understand it. 

" Oh," he said, relieved. " Well, then, don't let him 
suppose it is." He rose, and lighted a cigar. Dorothy 
stared at him from the seat which she kept on the arm of 
his chair. " Don't play with a man, Dorothy. It isn't 
nice," — he blew out the first slender whiff of smoke con- 
templatively, as he brushed a speck of lint from the new 
clerical coat to which he had treated himself since he had 
been at ease about the future, — " and it isn't fair. It's 
even unwise when a girl is making a marriage so for- 
25 



384: BENEFITS FORGOT. 

tunate and desirable in every way as yours." He frowned 
slightly. 

Dorothy raised her eyes and looked into his. " You 
don't understand, papa," she said quietly. " I shall never 
marry Mr. Deed." 

Cutter went to Ira's, Ernfield's office, the Vertners', 
and finally to the Maurices', on his return, without find- 
ing a trace of Philip. He thought the clergyman's re- 
plies to his inquiries short. He stabled his horse, and 
walked about the town, looking for Philip. 

The shops were still open, and men and women paused 
before them to price the goods displayed outside, or went in 
to the vividly lighted interiors, where the arc-light glowed 
and glared. Trade was going on listlessly. It was near 
the end of the month, the pay-car was still to come up 
from Denver, and the railway employees of all grades 
awaited the monthly guest. The hands at the mines and 
the cow-punchers were paid off at the same time, in order 
to keep the festival which followed pay-day, and which 
disorganized the town in the process of enriching it, 
within as narrow limits as possible. The lull that pre- 
cedes a fete therefore lay over Maverick. Only two thirds 
of the electric lamps were turned on ; but there was never- 
theless more light than noise. Suddenly a clatter of hoofs 
sounded above the vague and leisurely murmur of the 
quiet thoroughfare, and those on the sidewalk turned at 
sight of a horse ridden at a furious pace. No one save 
Cutter recognized the rider. The hoofs hammered across 
the bridge leading to the hotel, and Cutter followed 
hastily. The whistle of the night train sounded down in 
the valley at the moment, borne for miles through the 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 385 

clear air. Philip was standing at the bar of the hotel, 
draining a stiff glass. As Cutter laid his hands upon his 
arm, Philip raised his eyes and regarded him strangely. 
He motioned to the bartender for another glass. Cutter 
shook his head, and looked anxiously into his friend's 
face. 

" Where have you been ? " 

" To the devil — to Jasper." His voice was hoarse, and 
his black eyes stared from his haggard face with the effect 
of a man long ill. The train whistled again, nearer. 
Philip swallowed what remained of the spirits in his glass 
at a gulp. " Come, I'm off," he said. He gathered his 
change from the counter, and made a rush for the door, 
as the train roared into the station. Cutter caught his 
arm at the door. 

" Hold on, man ! You're mad ! " 

Philip turned a weary face upon him. He smiled 
sadly. " Yes," he said. 

" You're not well. It's crazy to be careering over the 
country in your state. Come back with me to the ' Snow 
Find,' and go to bed and behave yourself." 

" Oh, I'll behave myself. That's what I'm doing now. 
I've dropped the other thing. Come along." He made 
for the train, Cutter following him, remonstrating. 

" See here, you're not going to take this train. You're 
a sick man, I tell you." 

Philip gave him his weary smile again as he put his 
foot on the first step of the Pullman. " Yes, Cutter, I'm 
a sick man fast enough, but not in the way you mean. 
I've got to go to Pinon. It won't hurt me. Come along, 
if you don't believe me." 

Cutter gazed up at him for a moment, where he stood 



386 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

on the platform above him, in helpless perplexity. Then 
he said, " You know what you are ? " 

Philip laughed almpst with pleasure. " Yes ; I know." 
" Just stay there, then, till I get a ticket." 
The full moon was flooding the valley as the train ran 
out towards the mountains, beaming virginally, in this crys- 
talline atmosphere, through a medium no grosser than its 
own. The purity of the air gave a new effect of lumi- 
nosity, of splendour, and of abundance to the great lamp 
swinging aloft. It was light distilled ; the air was not 
conscious of it. It fixed the valley under its cold, bare, 
hard gaze, etching the circling hills against the sky with 
a finger dipped in light, which seemed to bound, to out- 
line, to select, and finally, as one looked, to detach it all 
from neighbouring sky and earth, and to catch it away 
into that strange effect of being a picture which we know 
in all memorable scenes. 

They began to climb into the recesses of the hills after 
the swift run through the valley. The opposite range of 
mountains was behind them, and as the young men looked 
out in silence from the windows of the compartment they 
had taken together in the Pullman, far away a liquid tract 
of radiance shone on their eyes from time to time ; it was 
the snow, crusted in molten reaches along the mountain- 
sides. Beside the silvery lakes of crust, what one knew 
by day for the wooded hollows of the lower slopes were 
black- mysteries under the light. 

Philip turned from the scene with a heavy sigh. 
" You can catch the 9:47 back from Barker's," he said 
suddenly, catching the eye of Cutter, who faced him from 
the opposite seat. " You mustn't think of coming along 
with me." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 387 

" I have an errand of my own over the range. Don't 
bother about me." 

" Come, no nonsense." 

" I have, I tell you." 

" Oh, well." He dropped the question listlessly. 

" I say, old man, what's the matter ? " Cutter laid a 
hand on his knee. 

" The devil's the matter," groaned Philip. " What do 
you suppose ? " 

" I don't know. Jasper ? " 

•" No, sir ; it isn't Jasper. I'm sick of that pretence. 
I cheated myself with the idea that it was Jasper when I 
let myself do the thing. But it wasn't. It was I." 

" I don't believe it." 

" Well, anyway, it's I who suffer for it." 

" I see that," returned Cutter, gently. " But how ? 
Why?" 

" Because I'm not the fine fellow I have liked to think 
myself, not even the fine fellow you think me. I'm not a 
fine fellow at all, Cutter ; and I've done a low thing." 

" Pshaw ! " 

" Is it lofty to abuse a woman's confidence, then ? Is 
it admirable to rob a man who has trusted you ? " 

" What have you done ? " asked his friend, quietly. 

" I've taken a mine which doesn't belong to me be- 
cause I could, and because the man to whom it belongs 
had done me a wrong, and wanted to marry the girl I 
wanted to marry. Is that plain ? " 

"The 'Little Cipher'?" stammered Cutter. "Jas- 
per?" 

Philip nodded. 

" But see here — " began Cutter, 



388 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Oh, there's nothing to say," cried Philip. " A man 
is one thing or the other. I'm the other. She despises 
me. She hates me." 
"Why?" 
"Why!" 

" Yes, why ? Does she know what Jasper has done ? " 
"Yes; but she knows what I have done. Nothing 
else makes any difference. It can't to a woman, and 
probably that shows that it shouldn't to any one." He 
told Cutter of Maurice's situation ; he explained his 
temptation, palliating nothing. "I thought the wrong 
Jasper had done me made my wrong right," he said. 
" It didn't. It only made a new one with separate con- 
sequences. I thought my love for her justified it ; to her 
that seemed the damning touch. I believe she could 
have forgiven my villainy, but not that — not that ! I 
fought it; I wouldn't see; I took my stand upon our 
love; I made her suffer as much as I knew how, and 
parted from her in anger. But all the time I felt her 
contempt scorching through me. When I got away from 
her it was more than I could bear. I hunted up Jasper, 
when I found he was back, and turned over the mine to 
him, as I ought to have done the first minute I heard of 
the strike." 
"What?" 

" You wouldn't have had me keep it, I hope?" 
" I know, Deed ; but owning up to Jasper — " 
" I didn't say I liked it. I was pursued by the thought 
of her scorn, I tell you. Do you think I could bear to 
know that she despised me, and that she was right? I 
had to do something. If she ever hears of it, she will 
know that I tried to do what I could." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 389 

"Yes, yes," cried Cutter, impatiently; "but the hu- 
miliation ! " 

"Have I deserved to please my pride? Jasper was a 
blackguard, as usual ; but there were two of us this time. 
It seemed to help the business along." 

" And you've told him? " 

Philip nodded ; but, at Cutter's look, " Oh, don't ask 
me what he said ! " exclaimed he. " It was a terrible 
scene. The fellow is ill. Coming back from his journey, 
he was caught in a blizzard ; for three days he was under 
a rock, in the snow ; he's in a bad way. He got up in 
bed; he raved; Ernfield came in, and I went. I looked 
back at him at the door, and he nodded to me with a 
gloating smile. I know what he means. He has me, 
now. I've put myself in the wrong. All that has gone 
before — all that led up to this — is cancelled. He'll take 
his opportunity. It's all right." 

He buried his face moodily in his hands. Cutter sat 
silent. He opened his lips to speak once or twice, and 
found nothing to say. The moon, which had been hidden 
since they had entered the gorge between the hills, and 
set out on their climb to the summit, gleamed suddenly 
upon a field of snow, lying high between the mountains 
into which they were steaming up. It shone into their 
windows, and filled the dusky compartment with radi- 
ance. 

Cutter began to speak in a low voice. He said Jasper 
would do nothing ; he didn't doubt his will, but nothing 
was open to him ; and he went on to tell his friend that 
he exaggerated the enormity of what he had done. " You 
say that you've always looked on the ' Little Cipher ' as 
Jasper's," he said. " But we've only your word for it — 



390 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

and your word for a mental process so intangible that 
even you can't say when or how the c Little Cipher ' be- 
came Jasper's mine, or by what process it ceased to be his 
and became yours." And he added that whatever might 
be true about this, surely the provocation made a differ- 
ence ; surely it counted that it was done against one man 
rather than another. He didn't see why he should con- 
cern himself much about anything done against Jasper. 

He believed some of this, but not enough to enable 
him to face Philip, as he stared at him with a miserable 
smile a moment before he muttered: "Rot! rot! rot! 
Very kind of you, Cutter, but no good. I can't deceive 
myself with such notions as that. It makes no difference, 
though. If you want to console me, don't talk about 
Jasper. I can get over that part of it, myself. It's the 
other — Cutter, can't you see it's the other that matters ? 
It's that I've done it against her ! I thought if she cared 
for me she would pardon it because I had done it for her. 
Crazy fool ! Not to see how it abused all her trust in me ; 
how it must wound her at her tenderest; how it must 
profane all our relation. She will never forgive me. She 
hates me. She despises me." 

He rose with a groan, and took a restless turn within 
the narrow space of the compartment, throwing his arms 
wide, and letting them fall again in despair. Suddenly he 
stood still and faced his friend. " Heavens, man ! Do 
you know what that means ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 391 



XXIX. 

Makgaket went to call on Dorothy the next morning. 
She had been thinking a great deal about her since the 
day before. All forms of misery seemed especially griev- 
ous to her just now, and useless forms of it seemed merely 
wicked. She had heard nothing from Deed, but there 
had not been time ; he had telegraphed to let her know 
of his arrival, and had promised to telegraph again as soon 
as he had anything to communicate. The dread in which 
she awaited this message created in hef, for the moment, 
a need to befriend the sorrow of another. She felt a cer- 
tain shyness. She had been conscious in their earlier 
meetings of the vague hesitation about her which Dorothy 
had tried to conceal. But she would not allow this to 
make a difference. 

She found the house upturned when she arrived at the 
Maurices'. Dorothy came into the little parlour after a 
moment, apologizing for her appearance : she was in the 
disarray of the house uniform in which she was accus- 
tomed to attack the heavier household problems. She 
kept on her apron. Margaret, glancing at her, saw the 
traces of tears on her cheeks. 

" I have come — " she began doubtfully. Her slow eye 
for such things showed her suddenly the pictures packed 
and standing in ranks against the wall, the upturned car- 
pet, the dismantled walls and swathed furniture. " But 
are you moving ? " 

" Yes ; there is no reason why I should not tell you, 
Mrs. Deed. Papa has sent in his resignation." She met 
her interlocutor's eyes for the moment as if with the inten- 



392 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

tion of putting some face upon the action. Margaret was 
the first to whom she had been obliged to make the an- 
nouncement ; put into words it sounded barren ; she saw 
that she had unconsciously relied on her father to front 
the inquiring world with an excuse. She found none for 
herself, and dropped her eyes before Margaret's clear, kind 
gaze. 

Margaret's own thought leaped to its decision with its 
habitual certainty where Deed was not concerned. Doro- 
thy was sitting on the sofa ; Margaret rose quickly, and 
came and stood in front of her. " Won't you let me help 
you ? " she said. 

"About moving?" asked Dorothy, with troubled eyes. 
" Oh, there's nothing. Thank you very much, of course. 
But we have so little." 

" I didn't mean about moving, though I should be glad 
if you would let me do anything for you in that, if you 
must go. But you had better stay. I was thinking 
about—" She sat down on the sofa beside her, and stole 
her hand upon Dorothy's. " Listen," she said in a low 
voice ; " I am in deep trouble — I too — the deepest. Won't 
you let me help you ? " 

The sudden tears started to Dorothy's eyes. " But 
how ? " she stammered. " But why ? " 

" He is near to me as well as to you, you know. It 
seems to give me a sort of right to speak. But perhaps 
you won't think that. Perhaps it hurts you to have it 
spoken of. I know — trouble is like that ; we wish to keep 
it to ourselves. But it's better shared, isn't it? It might 
be needless ; it so often is. It's hard to be wise, but we 
may be quite sure of that — don't you think so — that need- 
less additions to the misery of the world are wrong ? And 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 393 

even if it must remain all the trouble it seems to one's self, 
it is good to let another feel part of the ache with one. It 
somehow helps." 

Dorothy listened with averted face ; she kept her glis- 
tening eyes on the opposite wall ; she pressed the kindly 
hand as Margaret went on. When she finished she seized 
it, turning to face her, and gazed into her eyes for a mo- 
ment through a mist of tears. 

" Oh, you are good ! " she murmured, chokingly. " I 
am very unhappy ! " 

She sobbed out her story in Margaret's lap. When she 
had done, they remained a long time in each other's arms. 

" I see how you feel. It is hard," murmured Margaret, 
drying her eyes ; " but you must forgive him." 

The fair head on her shoulder was shaken violently. 
" Yes, yes," said Margaret, gently ; " you must, and you 
will." She felt herself very old in the presence of this 
violent young passion ; she felt rich in the abundance of 
her experience, and the richer because it was so recent. 
" You love him, don't you ? " 

Dorothy raised her head, and regarded Margaret in a 
kind of amazement. 

" Then you will forgive him," said Margaret, quickly. 
" Things don't matter so much as we think. I have 
learned that. One thing matters — only one. And you 
may be sure he has his excuses if you could know them. 
My husband is suffering from a wrong he believes he did 
him ; we have been very confident about it ; but since I 
have seen him I have doubted. We must both wait. Why, 
you saw him, you heard him — his honest eyes, that true 
voice — I don't believe he's false — not intentionally, not 
wickedly, not without excuse." 



394 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

« Oh, don't, don't ! " 

" Yes ; I know. If lie is false, in spite of all that, it's 
the worse — infinitely the worse. But be sure he would 
have something to say if you would give him his oppor- 
tunity." 

" He has had it ; it is he who has condemned himself. 
It was from his own lips. Don't think, please don't think, 
that I would believe any one else about him ! " 

Margaret observed her irresolutely, a little dashed. 
Her will to help her was unaltered, but she had not the 
habit of quick resource. 

" He said that he had taken his brother's mine ? " she 
repeated. 

" Yes, yes. He said — how little men understand ! — that 
he did it for me ! ■ That was his excuse ! " 

" Yes," said Margaret, slowly ; " I know what you mean. 
I can see how that would seem the worst pain of all ; and 
yet, don't you see, too," she added meditatively, " how per- 
haps it is an excuse, and if an excuse at all, the best ? " 
She put this forward doubtfully. 

Dorothy shook her head. " Oh, don't you think I 
have tried to believe that? Don't you think I tried to 
give him opportunities to excuse himself, to make it seem 
right, and that I have done my best to excuse him to my- 
self since ? Sometimes I have made myself believe that 
if I couldn't pardon his doing it for me, I ought to par- 
don him because it was done against his brother. It was 
a cruel position. But that makes it only worse — a thou- 
sand times worse, doesn't it ? " She asked it as a ques- 
tiou. Margaret was silent. " Doesn't it ? " she repeated. 

" Yes— no— perhaps. Do you know what his brother 
had done to him ? Do you know it all ?- " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 395 

" Oh, yes, yes ! It was very hard. But that's what I 
mean — it was so hard that it was for him all the more to 
hold his hand. It was his privilege not to strike. It 
seems to me no one ever had such an opportunity. And 
to use it as he did ! Oh, there is no excuse — none. The 
excuses only make it more wrong ; they make it impossible 
to forgive." 

Margaret bit her lip. She did not know what to say. 
But she reached out her hand suddenly, and said in a low 
voice : " If you have no excuse for him, think how much 
less he can have one for himself. Have you thought of 
that ? Doesn't it seem as if it almost forced you to forgive 
him? Think how he must be suffering ! Eemember, he 
loves you, too. Think how his love must be making it a 
torture for him that you should think of him as you do, 
and. that you are right." 

"Yes; I have thought of that. I have thought of 
everything. But nothing helps. It is done — done. If 
he loved me " — a sob caught at her throat — " if he loved 
me, it ought to have been a reason for him against this — 
this that he has done. It's not a reason to forgive him — 
I can't feel it. I have prayed to feel it. I have prayed — " 
Her voice died away. She avoided her companion's eye. 

Margaret looked at her longingly, tenderly, helplessly, 
and Dorothy gave back her gaze. In Margaret's plain, 
wholesome face, in her genuine eyes, in the wide, clear, 
benignant brow, Dorothy read goodness and strength — 
nothing but goodness and strength. The primness and 
precision she had been used to fancy in her seemed re- 
solved into these ; the qualities which she had been used 
to wish that Margaret would let her like in her seemed 
somehow to have freed themselves from the old bondage ; 



396 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

she saw that she had in some way misconstrued or 
wrongly imagined her — or perhaps she was changed ; 
perhaps experience had taught her. Did one come to see 
things differently, then, in time? Did one's way of look- 
ing at certain matters alter ? Should she ever think dif- 
ferently of Philip ? 

Margaret, on her side, was looking into Dorothy's eyes, 
thinking how gentle and sweet and true and right-minded 
she was ; but thinking, too, that in a way, a very remote 
way, she stood where she had once stood — where one saw 
the right so clearly that one was in danger of not seeing 
all the pity of the wrong ; where it was hard to forgive. 
The cases were not at all the same ; it was the youth that 
spoke in Dorothy, of course — the intense, the impulsive, 
passionately certain youth ; and it was not youth, whatever 
else it was, that had worked in herself to the same ends. 
But, at all events, Margaret felt drawn to her by a mys- 
terious bond of sympathy ; she felt that she knew enough 
of her state of mind to comprehend, to sympathize, and 
she yearned to say certain things to the young girl beside 
her; but she found no words for them. Even about 
Philip's offence itself (a simple and concrete subject) she 
could not trust herself to speak ; she wished only to say 
what would be quite true. She could not let herself com- 
fort Dorothy against her own conscience about what 
Philip had seemingly done. If he had done it, it was 
hateful and wicked to her ; yet there was another point of 
view. Perhaps Margaret was less entirely illumined by 
her experience than she thought; perhaps none of us 
escape out of ourselves, through any experience, beyond 
recall. 

She rose at last, and Dorothy rose with her. " I don't 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 397 

know what to say," Margaret said. " I'm not sure what 
it would be right to say. I am not sure of anything any 
more. But you will let me come to see you again, I hope, 
and we can talk." 

" Oh, come. Pray come," begged Dorothy, taking her 
hand. 

" And you won't move, yet ? You will wait ? " 

Dorothy seemed to take an inventory of the dismantled 
room and of the situation in her swift glance. " I see 
what you mean," she said, in a moment. " But I daren't 
say that. The thought of seeing him again, of meeting 
him — you don't know what it is to me. I know I'm not 
reasonable about it, but I feel as if I must go away. I 
feel as if we should only be happy again — father and I — 
and get back to our good old times together before — be- 
fore he came, by going to some place a long way off, and 
very different from this. And father has sent in his res- 
ignation ; he wouldn't like to recall it." She pressed her 
companion's hand. " It is so good of you to come — to 
care. You won't think me ungrateful if I can't see it 
quite as you see it — not yet, at all events ? " 

" Oh, I don't know how I see it ! " exclaimed Mar- 
garet, hastily. " I am the last person you should trust 
to ; I make a great many mistakes ; I am not wise. I 
used to be very certain ; bu fc things have happened to alter 
that lately. I am not sure of anything — but — but per- 
haps this is true, — that if we have charge of men's ideals, 
as men say, we mustn't be too hard in judging them by 
them. If we love them, we must wish to help them back 
to them, I think, when they fall; and, at all events, I 
don't think it can be wrong for us to remember always 
that they have to do their good and evil in a different 



398 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

world from ours — a world we don't understand, perhaps." 
She gazed over Dorothy's shoulder, with a far-away look 
in her eyes, in which she seemed to herself to be question- 
ing and resolving her own future. 

" But right and wrong remain — surely they are the 
same in all worlds," said Dorothy, bewildered by this 
strain of reasoning from Margaret. " And our loving — 
that seems to be just it ! It doesn't matter that some 
one for whom we care nothing does a thing beneath 
him. When — when another does it — " She did not 
finish. 

" I don't know — I don't know," mused Margaret, with 
the same far-looking eyes. " It's true, of course ; but it's 
not all the truth — or, at least, there is a better truth, per- 
haps. Love is better." She bent over and kissed her. 
" Good-bye," she said. 

Dorothy watched her go away, with many feelings. 



XXX. 

Makgaket's way home took her by Dr. Ernfield's 
office, and, as she passed, she heard a rap on the window. 
Beatrice's face appeared at the pane, and she went in, at 
her silent gesture. They encountered in the outer office, 
where Beatrice whispered that Dr. Ernfield was ill. His 
long ride of the day before, followed by a night of watch- 
ing at Jasper's bedside, had brought on another haemor- 
rhage. 

" Is Jasper back, then ? Is he ill ? " Margaret asked 
quickly. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 399 

" Yes ; he's back, and he's very ill," returned Beatrice ; 
and in a hushed voice she told her of the blizzard in which 
he had been caught on his way back over the mountains 
from Mineral Springs ; how he had spent three days with- 
out food or drink under an overhanging rock, dying slow- 
ly of exhaustion, cold, and hunger ; and how he had at 
length been found by a lumber-team going up 0. K. val- 
ley for a load. The men had taken him into the town 
of 0. K., and he had been laid up at the hotel there until 
now. 

" Poor fellow ! " exclaimed Margaret. " Poor fellow ! 
I wish I could go out and nurse him. Is he alone ? " 

" He has his cow-boys." 

" Cow-boys ! " cried she. " No ; I mustn't," she added, 
after a moment's meditation. " But how like Dr. Ernfield 
to sit up with him ! Tell me," she said, laying a hand on 
her companion's arm, " he is better ? " 

" Yes, he's better ; but he has been very ill. Ned is 
going to take his place with Jasper, and I'm going to ask 
you to take my place with him for a moment. I left Ed- 
ward in the irrigating-ditch. He will be wet through." 

Margaret was about to say that she couldn't stay, that 
it was impossible ; but this seemed foolish, on reflection. 
She put off her shawl in the outer office, and went in to 
Ernfield, wmile Beatrice silently gathered her wraps in the 
inner room. She hushed Margaret's entrance into the 
room where he lay, with her finger on her lip. He was 
asleep, she saw. So much the better. 

Beatrice indicated with her finger the medicine he 
was to take next, whispered one or two further instruc- 
tions, and glided out, sa}dng she would be back imme- 
diately. Margaret gave a quick glance about the untidy, 



400 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

mannish room. This, then, was where he lived. There 
was an unframed medical print or two, and some stuffed 
specimens. The walls were almost bare, save in the cor- 
ners, where they were cobwebbed. Margaret could never 
have lived for a moment in a dishevelled room. The deso- 
lateness of this one gave her a pang of homesickness for 
him. She saw that the fire was dying down, and looked 
about for wood. 

He stirred uneasily as she softly put on a log, and 
opened his eyes on her. She rose quickly. His bewil- 
dered stare broke into a smile. " Have you taken Mrs. 
Vertner's place ? " he asked. His voice was quite strong. 
Perhaps, she thought to herself — perhaps he would yet 
live to conquer his disease, and to take his place in life 
with the others. She knew that this could not be, that 
it was impossible ; but the other seemed too dreadful. 
They faced each other alone for the first time since the 
day they had ridden up the Ute trail together. 

" It is good to see you again," he said, as he put forth 
his wasted hand. She took it and held it a moment si- 
lently, as she gazed out of the window, thinking of many 
things. The sunlight was pouring into the little space 
of Mesa street on which Ernfield's rooms looked. From 
where she stood she could see the office of the " Maverick 
Sentinel," which she recalled as the name of the paper 
she had cause to remember. The days following Deed's 
going returned to her, as she stood looking out at the 
sign and holding Ernfield's hand, and it came to her that 
it was Ernfield, in a way, whom she had to thank for her 
husband and her happiness. 

The wind hid the office of the newspaper, and " St. 
Ann's Rest " and the post-office next door, when it raised, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 401 

as it did from time to time, a mighty cloud of dust. 
Women who were walking would sometimes pause before 
one of these gusts, and turn their backs, burying their 
faces in their muffs. The men often wore protecting 
goggles or glasses, and seemed to take the wind and dust 
as part of the universal joke. 

As she stole a glance at his face again, and saw in his 
look the illusory brightness and vitality of the consump- 
tive, grave and silent tears started in her eyes. 

" I sha'n't be so sorry not to get well, after all," he 
said suddenly, observing her from under his half-closed 
eyelids. She looked, he thought, even more than she 
usually did, the benignant goddess of all right-doing. 
He was conscious of an absurd wonder whether she must 
dress her hair in that way because she was herself, or 
whether she had to be herself, having once brushed those 
silky brown strands back from her forehead in that severe 
fashion. He was as much at a loss to say why he liked 
her way of parting her hair uncompromisingly from fore- 
head to crown, without a decoration or extrusion of any 
sort, and smoothing it simply down to the ears, where it 
curled back in a way that made him long to tell her how 
utterly nice she was, as he was at a loss to say why he 
liked her — why he loved her, in fine, to his madness, his 
torment. " I sha'n't be so sorry not to get well," he re- 
peated, " because by the time I could get well, Mrs. Vert- 
ner and you would have spoiled me past remedy. I 
shouldn't be able to resume my place in society, decently. 
No one would be able to tolerate me. If you really want 
me to have courage to get well, you'd better go before it's 
too late." 

She answered him with an indulgent smile only. 



402 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Ah, well," lie went on, " it's little matter, either way. 
The game will soon be up." He put away the instinctive 
denial that leaped to her lips, with a gesture. " Don't say 
it," he asked her. " There's no need." A whimsical little 
groan escaped him as he shifted his position. He stared 
at her in far-away thought. He caught her hand. " I 
thought I could die without asking it. But it can't hurt 
you — my question — not from a man who has his death- 
warrant. Tell me — are you happy ? " 

She gazed down into his eyes a moment doubtfully. 
She felt herself choking ; she nodded painfully. 

" Ah, that's good ! " he exclaimed. " Good ! And it's 
true ? " He turned a keen glance on her. " Everything 
is well with you ? " 

She shook her head. 

He regarded her for a moment thoughtfully. " May 
I guess your trouble ? " he asked, with a deepening of the 
kindly note in his voice. She said nothing. " Jasper 
told me a long story when I was called to him last 
night." 

He told her what she already knew about the origin 
of Jasper's illness, and how, in the watches of the night, 
as he sat by his bedside, he had poured into his ears the 
whole narrative of his relation to his father and Philip. 
Margaret flushed. How much did he know ? 

" It must have been very hard for you," she heard 
him saying. 

" How ? What ? " she asked, startled. 

"All of it. You can't think how it came over me, 
sitting there in the dark with him — what you must have 
suffered. I have never known anything of it all. I 
have fancied things, now and'then, of course ; but I have 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 403 

always liked to believe you happy, and I didn't allow 
myself to fancy much. The truth is worse than my fan- 
cies. It must have been very hard for you," he repeated. 

" It hasn't always been easy," she owned. 

" Ah, if I could forget the time I tried to make it 
harder ! " 

" Don't think that, please. It was you who made 
everything plain. It was you who helped me. Why — " 
she hesitated, — " I don't know why I shouldn't say it. I 
owe you my happiness." 

"Do you ? " He reached up and took her hand 
again. " Do you ? " he repeated. " You don't. You 
mustn't. But perhaps you may, too, if you like," he 
added, with a smile. " Leave the idea with me for a 
while. I sha'u't need it long, and it will do me good. 
Yes," he said happily to himself, " I could go away with 
that thought. You'd better not stay. You'll take it 
back." 

" But it's true." 

" Is it ? Well, no matter. I like it just as well as 
false. Your seeing it that way — that's all that counts. 
And about the happiness — you manage to find it in spite 
of what we were talking of just now? If I've given it 
to you, I want more than ever to know that I gave you 
the genuine article." 

" Yes ; in spite of that and — some other things, I 
think I may say I'm happy. Or, at least, I shouldn't 
know how to choose any way to be happier." 

'■ There are other things ? " 

"Nothing that we shall not solve at once and have 
done with forever. Whatever comes, we have that com- 
fort now." 



404 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

A shadow passed over his face at that tiny world- 
including, world-excluding " we " ; but he repeated fer- 
vently, " G-ood ! good ! " 

He saw her eyes light suddenly with a light that he 
had not brought into them. She went to the window, 
and rapped briskly upon it. A figure on the other side of 
the street turned at the sound, and, recognizing the face 
at the window, came quickly across the road. 

" Excuse me if I leave you a moment," she said, and 
turned at the door, with a beaming face, to add, as she 
nodded towards him, " We shall know now." 

When she had opened the office door to Deed she drew 
him in and folded him in her arms, and then held him off 
and questioned his face, reading the good news in his 
smile with greedy eyes. Ernfield in the next room turned 
wearily to the wall. She found him so when she ran in 
for a moment to see that all was well with him. Then 
she returned, and questioned Deed. She saw before he 
spoke that he was very happy ; his face had taken on a 
radiant look. It was like the face of the man she had 
known in the year before their marriage. She was 
conscious for the first time how old and worn she had 
grown used to seeing him look. He was not looking old 
now ; he was looking young and buoyant. Beatrice came 
in upon them before he could give her his news, and Deed 
must greet her, and Margaret must show her the last 
medicine that Ernfield had taken, and must linger a 
moment alone by his bedside to say, leaning over him 
as she buttoned her gloves : " I came to help you, and 
you have comforted me. It was always the way. Some 
day you must let me change it; you don't know how 
much I should like to feel that I had the advantage 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 405 

of you in that, even for a moment. I should like to 
help you." 

He stretched up his hand to her ; she noted with pain 
how frail and thin it seemed. " You are my help," he 
said, with a sad, eager smile. " I think you know that. 
It is you who make things possible for me." 

A sudden flood of compassion filled Margaret's heart 
as she looked down into his weary eyes. In the great 
relief which had come to her at sight of her husband's 
face, in the joy of having him back, which seemed to give 
him to her as if for the first time, the thought of this 
maimed and broken life, so poor in joy of any sort, went 
through her with an afflicting pain. Her own share in 
his fate enlarged itself, and seemed to press upon her 
stiflingly ; myriads of memories went electrically through 
her brain. So poor — so poor he was ! And she so rich ! 
She stooped with an irresistible impulse, and pressed a 
fleet kiss on his forehead through her blinding tears. 

She seized Deed's arm passionately when they were 
outside, and walked swiftly with him towards the main 
street, with her muff to her face. For a long time neither 
of them spoke. Then he began in a low voice, and told 
her his news. 

When the servant brought Deed's name to Dorothy 
next morning, she experienced a sinking of the heart; 
but she renewed her resolution with a stern word to her- 
self, and went down to him. As she took his hand a 
little shock went through her that was not all pain. " His 
father ! His father ! " she caught herself murmuring. To 
him she said in a scarcely audible voice, " I am very glad 
to see you." Her manner was at once eager and reluct- 



406 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

ant. She suddenly looked up, encountered his kindly 
eye, and colored. His eye was at the moment tenderly stu- 
dious of her. He saw what Philip perceived in her outward 
aspect, at least, to like. As she stood before him a little 
shyly, taking his hand in her cordial pressure, and lowering 
her eyes after the first full, frank, pleading meeting with 
his, she seemed to him very charming. 

" You know why I have come ? " he said, bending over 
her. 

"About—" 

" Yes ; I want you to save him." 

She motioned her visitor to the couch, taking a chair 
herself. " Save him ? " she repeated. She clasped her 
hands in her lap, and drew herself slightly together in 
unconscious resistance. She had instinctively pushed her 
chair back a little as she sat down ; she found the mere 
potency of his presence, his individuality, vaguely control- 
ling. 

" I want you to let me bring you together again ; and 
I want you to do this not for his sake, but for mine. 
When I tell you, you will understand; and you won't 
think, I hope, that I ask as much as I must seem to. Last 
night, Miss Maurice, I came back from Leadville happier 
than men often are. I had heard great news of him, news 
that changed all I had been base and cruel enough to 
think of him. I wanted to hug him. Instead I found 
him gone, and this for news of him — first what he had 
done, and then that you had broken with him. You were 
right. You could do no less. I understand all your feel- 
ing. But, Miss Maurice, you must take him back. It 
was I who took Jasper's mine." 

" You ! " she cried. She smiled nervously. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 407 

" Yes, I. Not by the outward rules of things. That 
was Philip's part — to seem to do it. But the real doer of 
an act is the one behind it all who is responsible for it. 
I was responsible for this. You know what I did against 
Jasper. This is one of the fruits of it. If I had not done 
that, this could not have happened. I made the situation. 
He had to act in it as he did. The blame's mine. Lift 
it from him ! It's that I want to ask you." 

She was bewildered ; she did not know what to say. 
She stole a glance at him where he sat, and perceived the 
look like Philip's look; it was about the mouth perhaps; 
it was his smile that was like Philip's. He was hand- 
somer than his son. As she whipped another furtive 
glance at him, she found herself trusting him ; his sturdy 
frame, the clear-cut, powerful face, the alert and genial 
eye — all had an effect of gentle force, on which she in- 
stinctively reposed. To her it seemed that he looked very 
right. He went on in a moment to tell her what he had 
learned at Leadville, beginning with his quarrel with Phil- 
ip, and taking pleasure in condemning himself. He said 
that he had made an egregious and wicked mistake. And 
then he made her see (he told the story with glistening 
eyes) how this precious boy of his, whom he had dared to 
cast off for a fancied baseness, and against whom he had 
hardened his heart, had all the time been sheltering and 
righting and saving him behind his back by the most 
shameless trick. He broke down in the midst of it. 
Tears of pride filled his eyes. 

" That was good, that was noble of him," said Dorothy 
quickly. 

" And you will forgive him ? You will pardon him ? 
You will take him back ? " 



408 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Oh, don't you think I want to? Don't you suppose 
I long to? I can't!" 

She did not know how she said these things. It 
seemed easy to talk to him, but difficult, impossible not to 
do what he wished. The effect of his presence grew upon 
her rather than diminished, and a kind of diffidence 
lingered in all she said. She felt keenly how much he 
had put aside to come to her ; that gave authority to all he 
said — that, and the sense that he was older than she, that 
he was his father, that he was in trouble ; and she felt her 
own young girl's feelings, opinions, judgments, shrinking 
in the balance by the operation of an instinct almost like 
one of decorum. 

But she called upon her resolution. In the time which 
had passed since Margaret had left her she had gone over 
the question between herself and Philip with all the hon- 
esty she could find in herself. She had forced herself to 
face it with absolute pitilessness for her own pride, and 
for all that might be merely extraneous or selfish in her 
feeling. She had rehearsed it all, as well, with the ten- 
derness for him which, alas ! she did not need to force ; 
and she believed that she had taken her resolve. It was 
taken in bitterness and tears ; but it was fixed. 

Deed leaned over from his place on the couch, and 
took her hand. " You won't punish him for what began 
with me," he said. 

" I see what you mean," she said in a dry voice, out of 
which she kept her feeling as she could ; " but I fear that 
can't be true for me. I can perceive it, but I can't feel it. 
I have thought a great deal of what you speak of, though, 
since he — since Philip told me of it ; I have thought of 
what the punishment you found for your son must have 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 409 

cost you, I mean, and of his gratitude; and I've been 
very sorry for you. May I say that ? " 

" I am very glad to have you say it. I see that you're 
good, that you're kind." 

"No; don't think that, please," murmured Dorothy 
painfully. " I am hard ; I must be hard." 

He regarded her for a moment as he withdrew his 
hand. "Then we shall understand each other, Miss 
Maurice," he said. " I am hard. It is that which has 
brought me here. If I hadn't been hard, I should never 
have got myself and Philip into this miserable mess with 
Jasper, which has led Philip to do, now, what you see." 

" But what you did, and what he has done — they are 
very different. What you did — do you mind my saying 
that? — may not have been right, perhaps, but it was splen- 
did." 

His face confessed his pleasure in her praise, but he 
said quickly : " Are you quite sure, Miss Maurice, that if 
you knew all Philip's motives, you wouldn't find some- 
thing heroic about them, too? What I did used to seem 
to me fine, too ; it doesn't now. But it makes no differ- 
ence ; I had to do it, and every one near to me has had to 
pay for it. It's taken its revenge," he said sadly. " I 
was right, perhaps ; but I was not right to take my right. 
An injury began with that which has gone on ever since. 
There was no injury until I did it to Jasper, for his was 
what I made it. If I had not resisted it — I see that, now 
— it must have stopped there. I was not wise enough. 
I answered his villainy, and the penalty has been brought 
home to me since in every form through which I could be 
made to feel. It has not always been myself ; it has been 
Margaret's fate to suffer for it, too, and now it's Philip's. 



410 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

Don't force him to suffer more for it than you must. 
That's what I've come to beg of you." 

The dignity and reality of his trouble affected her 
deeply as she listened. Her generous instinct to rush to 
the aid of any one in pain or difficulty came over her. But 
what seemed a final obstacle rose to withhold her. She 
did not know how to explain it. She lowered her eyes to 
her lap. " Mrs. Deed came to see me ; she has been more 
than good. She will have told you how I — what I feel," 
she said huskily. 

" I know. It's not only the wrong he has done Jasper, 
culpable, strange, and mistaken as that is. There is more 
to forgive." 

" Oh, if it were only to forgive ! That would be easy. 
I suppose I have forgiven now. When one gets over the 
first pain and shock, one forgives, if one loves, instinc- 
tively. But that is nothing — a form of words. He would 
not care for that ; and I couldn't offer it to him. What 
he wishes is something else. The only thing I could do 
that would do any good would be to bring it all back, — 
our old relation — as if this had never been. I can wish it 
back, and I do. But I can't bring it back. Nothing, it 
seems to me, can do that — nothing ! " 

" You mean that you can't bring it back for his own 
sake or for yours ? I know that. Won't you try it, then, 
for the sake of some one outside of it all — some one who 
has no claim ? " 

" You mean — " she began. 

" Yes," he answered eagerly ; " will you do it for me ? " 
A flush mounted to her face. "I have told you how I 
wronged and misunderstood him," he went on. " You 
know how he has rewarded me. You see — I'm sure it's 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 41 1 

natural to you to see such things — how I must long to 
do something for him ; how I can't bear to think, how- 
ever much he has deserved it, that he should be un- 
happy." 

Dorothy looked over at him compassionately. " I see 
that," she murmured. 

He leaned forward, and took her hand again. " He 
will pardon me ; he will run to do it. But I can't take 
his pardon on those terms. You understand. He has 
humiliated me ; he has heaped burning coals of fire on 
my head. I can't face him in his trouble empty-handed." 

" No," she murmured. She was much shaken. 

" Listen, my dear girl," he went on. " Do you think 
that what he has done is less a pain and trouble to me 
than to you ? Have you thought how he is repeating my 
experience? In attacking Jasper, after all his forbear- 
ance, he is beginning as I began, and must go on as I 
have gone on. You see that. It doesn't make what he 
has done seem less wrong, though he must have excuses 
of which we know nothing ; but, to me, it makes it more 
pitiful. You understand how I can't look on, and see 
that happening, and do nothing to stop it. I must stop 
it. Miss Maurice, I'm sure you can't have the heart to 
let him stumble on into the mire where I've been strug- 
gling these last months — you won't let him do that for 
lack of a word. I'm sure you will help me ! " 

He stopped, and a great pity for the man into whose 
eyes she was looking, for Philip, and for the situation 
Philip had made common to both of them, came over her. 
It was almost impossible to her not to try to help them. 
" Oh, if it were a question of pity, of tenderness, of love, 
of anything but what it is ! " she burst out. 



412 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" But finally that is the question — how much you love 
him, isn't it ? And is anything impossible to love ? " 

He leaned forward suddenly. " My dear girl, will you 
let me tell you of something which has come very close to 
me ? " She was gazing at him in absorption ; she nodded 
tremulously. " You will understand, if I tell you this, 
that it is necessary — necessary to me that you should take 
him back ; you will see that I couldn't speak of it for a 
light reason. You have heard how I abandoned Margaret 
on her wedding-day ? " 

" Oh, don't speak of that ! Don't make me feel that I 
have forced you to speak of that," she exclaimed in a 
kind of panic. She was not sure of what she was saying. 

He silenced her with a sad and gentle gesture, and 
sketched the occasion of his difference with Margaret 
quickly. " You see," he said, at the end, " I had no ex- 
cuse. It was simply a monstrous humouring of my pas- 
sion. I forced her to pretend, if she would unselfishly 
save me from myself, and then savagely punished her for 
it. I left her as if I had never had an obligation to her. 
It was an insult, and not a brave one. To desert a wom- 
an on her wedding-day could never be a handsome thing 
to do ; in this case, where her only crime was caring for 
me too well, it was an abominable cruelty. And how did 
she reward me ? Ah, my dear girl, you know. I could 
never come back to her ; she knew it. She knew that I 
had shut the gates of paradise behind me, and that, ex- 
cept for the chance of her mercy, I must remain at the 
decent distance I had chosen for myself, cursing my folly, 
and longing vainly for her. It was her right never to 
suffer me to so much as see her again — a thousand times 
her right. I had outraged her pride ; I had wounded her 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 413 

at a woman's tenderest and dearest point. And she for- 
gave me ! Don't ask me how. She found a way." He 
got up abruptly, and looked down for a moment in silence 
at the stooping figure in the chair before him. Dorothy's 
head was in her hands. She was weeping bitterly. " My 
dear girl," he asked with grave tenderness, " won't you 
find a way ? " 

She rose and put her hands in his. 

" I will try," she said, lifting her tear-stained face to 
his bravely. 

" And I may tell him — " 

" Tell him I will see him." 

He looked at her long and questioningly, while he 
held her hands. 



XXXI. 



" But you didn't tell him that there was any difficulty 
between Miss Maurice and Philip, I hope ? You weren't 
such a dunce as that, Ned ? " 

It was two days later, and they were seated at dinner, 
Margaret had secured rooms at the Centropolis House 
against Deed's return from Pinon (with Philip, she 
hoped), and had taken up her own residence there, though 
she was much at the Yertners'. She had said that she 
felt that they — she and Deed — must begin to think of 
settling down, like sensible people (she had begun to 
make plans from the hour in which she heard Deed's 
good news about the Leadville business) ; and though she 
did not pretend that apartments at a hotel were even by 



414 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

way of gratifying this ambition, she said that they at least 
did not constitute a step in the other direction, like stay- 
ing with one's friends. 

Vertner arrested the carving-knife with which he had 
been inquiring his way to the joint of the fowl before him, 
and levelled a glance of scorn at his wife in response to 
her question. 

" Well, I should hope not," she rejoined to this dis- 
claimer, as he busied himself about the fowl again. And 
then after a pause, " I shall always say it was very good of 
you to go out to the Triangle to see what you could do 
for him, Ned." 

" Shall you ? Well, I should think more of it myself 
if Jasper interested me less. I didn't go to nurse him ; I 
went to take a look at him. He has a special effect on 
me ; I'm curious about him ; I'm always wondering what 
he will do next." 

" Well, you see what he has done next ? " 

" Yes ; but just before he did it, I thought he was 
going to do something else." Vertner asked Edward to 
hand him the cranberries, as he finished cutting some of 
the fowl for himself, and settled himself at the table with 
the conscious pleasure of the carver who has earned his 
contentment. " I had got his next move all planned out 
in my mind ; I thought I saw that he had seen a point 
which dawned on me while I was sitting with him ; per- 
haps he has seen it, — indeed, I'm pretty sure he has, — but 
he hasn't acted on it. He has done something even more 
brilliant." 

" Do you call it brilliant to go after Mr. Maurice and 
Dorothy by the next train?" 

" From his point of view — certainly. Do }^ou suppose 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 415 

Jasper could sit still under the thought that, after all that 
has happened, it should be his brother who succeeds with 
her ? He will know how to reconcile himself to it if it 
happens; but he isn't going to let it happen if he can 
help himself. The first news that reached him when he 
was brought back to Maverick was that they were engaged ; 
and if I know Jasper, he wanted to break something in 
celebration of that news. But then along comes Philip 
and puts a weapon into his hands, and he rages, but 
chirks up. He sees the opportunity his brother has given 
him. And then he hears that the engagement is broken 
on account of the same affair, and that pleases him down 
to the ground." 

" But how did he hear that ? And how do you sup- 
pose he knew that Mr. Maurice and Dorothy were going 
yesterday afternoon, when no one else knew it ? " 

" Well, I think I could imagine. Who has always 
been his friend here ? " 

" Why, Mr. Maurice ; but—" 

" There is no ' but.' Maurice was angry when she 
broke the engagement, of course. He supposed Philip 
was the rich one, then. But the transfer of the ' Little 
Cipher ' to Jasper changed his mind, just as she was begin- 
ning to change her mind back again. I don't believe he 
was very sorry that, if the ' Sentinel ' had to copy that 
article from the Laughing Valley paper about his doings 
over there, it should choose this time for it. Perhaps she 
gave him more definite reason to believe that she would 
forgive Philip than she gave Deed. At all events, he 
wouldn't care to keep her where Philip would certainly 
find her within a day or two and make it up with 
her. He decided to take an early train,, for various 

27 



416 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

reasons ; but first he let Jasper know where he was 
going." 

" I wish we knew. I begged her to telegraph. I 
knew Margaret would never forgive me if I didn't. But 
I wanted to know for myself. I am very sorry for her." 

" So am I. But I am still more sorry for Deed and 
Philip. Think of Deed's bringing him back here to find 
her gone ! He's set his heart on this thing. He is in 
such a position that his peace of mind depends on his 
success in it. I sha'n't forget for a while the after-dinner 
cigar I smoked with Deed the day before he called on 
Dorothy. I've seen men crushed before ; but not like 
that. Well, of course it tore him up to have to feel that 
Phil had turned round and been his salvation after all. 
After quarrelling with him, and casting him off because 
he thought he was unfaithful to him, it was pretty rough. 
He could have stood it to know that he had been in the 
wrong, and that he had accused Philip without any too 
much excuse; but this was another matter. It's awful 
for a generous man to have to see that he has done a nasty 
thing. From the hour when he faced the fact that his 
son had really been fixing things up for him at Leadville 
— doing his best to stop the boomerang Deed had started 
on its cheerful career before he left Leadville, using the 
$50,000 he had flung at him to save him, and generally 
toeing the mark, and doing his duty like a little man — 
from that hour he has been the happiest and the most 
miserable man going. To know that Phil was all right 
tickled him to death, but it shocked him to think how he 
had used him. His going to Dorothy yesterday didn't 
surprise me. He didn't say he was going ; but it was the 
only thing left to him. When Margaret told him about 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 417 

it, I guess he felt that this little rumpus between Miss 
Maurice and Phil was a kind of providence. It gave him 
a show. He couldn't take Philip's hand again until he 
had made it right with him, somehow. That was his 
chance. He took it and won — or, at least, if Maurice had 
let things alone, he stood a first-rate chance to win. And 
now he will be bringing Phil back with him to-morrow 
morning, both of them all ready to be mighty happy, and 
I don't know which the gladdest to be friends with the 
other again, and they will find her gone. It makes me 
tired ! " exclaimed Vertner, pressing his handkerchief 
nervously to his brow, and ejaculating the slang as if it 
had the force of a phrase sacred to grief. 

" I'm not sure whether Philip deserves much pity," 
said Beatrice after a moment. " Of course I'm sorry for 
him ; but, as Margaret would say, I'm not sure that I 
ought to be. She couldn't do anything but give him up 
after he had done such a thing." 

"Perhaps she couldn't. I'm not sure that another 
woman (a little different, or a little older woman : say a 
woman of thirty, instead of a girl of twenty-one) might 
not have found that she could do something else in her 
situation, though — dodge round a bit, and find her feel- 
ings coming up in unexpected places to square things 
with her conscience or her other feelings." 

"It's easy for men to say such things; and perhaps 
you are right — about some women," responded his wife, 
after a moment. " But you can't judge, Ned. You can't 
feel as a woman must in such a case. The circumstances 
were peculiar." 

" Peculiar mainly in his not being so allfiredly guilty 
as her treatment of him makes out. Of course it isn't 



418 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

proper to take your brother's mine; but that isn't the 
question. The actual question is surrounded by a thou- 
sand reasons for thinking that it is just right to take 
your brother's mine, and that it might be a hallowed 
duty. Besides, he didn't do that — he merely failed to let 
on that he had once thought the ' Little Cipher ' would 
be a good mine to give to his brother." 

" Pshaw, Ned ! You exaggerate ! " 

" Well, I'm stating the case for the defence. You 
don't expect me to stick to absolutely undecorated facts, 
do you? Still, I stand by that. That's the gist of it. 
You get into a hair-splitting region when you try to say 
whose mine that actually was. My mind is too gross for 
it. And, at all events, you must admit that she has been 
pretty hard on him ; she's too clear-headed. Women are 
that way when it comes to the wrong-doings of the man 
nearest to them; and especially if it touches them di- 
rectly. I see it in you sometimes, Trix; but Dorothy is 
much worse." 

" Oh, she sees things," owned Beatrice. 

" Sees things ! Well, I should remark — outside and 
inside, and underneath, and all around. That's what 
makes me pity Phil. No man can stand that kind of 
soul-plumbing, straight-in-the-eye, unforgiving, un dis- 
counting, heavenly stare. We're not built that way — and 
Phil, poor fellow, less than most of us. Phil makes al- 
lowances for himself; he knows where he needs them, 
and he puts them where they will do the most good. It 
has got him into the habit of thinking that other people 
will be making the same for him ; and some of us crude 
sinners, who know how it is ourselves, make them right 
along, and glad of the chance, with one of the best fel- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 419 

lows in the world. But, bless my soul ! is that the way 
she takes him? Is that the way any woman takes a 
man? Not much ! She takes him on the ground of the 
fellow she's dreamed, and he has to live up not only to 
the man she thinks him, but to the kind of man she 
thinks all good men. It's the sort of thing to do a man 
good. I don't deny it. It puts stuff into him ; it's a 
tonic and a stimulant and a bracer. But it's hard, con- 
stant ticklish work. And the worst of it is, it doesn't 
count — not for what it is. Women, dear things, fancy it 
is the every-day attitude of the sex ; and when some fine 
morning you relax a bit, you're punished not on the basis 
of what you are, but on the basis of what she's all along 
been thinking you." 

" Oh, you don't get any more than you deserve," 
laughed Beatrice. 

" It's all right. I don't say it isn't. I only say that 
we're entitled to warning; it's like playing poker with- 
out notice that you are playing ' straights.' I like to be 
familiar with the rules myself, before I risk my money." 

" The rules are perfectly simple. You've only got to 
be good." 

" You call that simple ! I fancy Phil wouldn't agree 
with you. — Shut up, son ! " he said, in an aside to the 
young man who was strumming on his plate with his 
spoon. 



XXXII. 



In the late afternoon of the following day Dorothy was 
sitting on the piazza of one of the smaller hotels at Colo- 



420 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

rado Springs watching the sun go down behind Pike's 
Peak. The little city of invalids and tourists, which has 
easily one of the loveliest situations in the world, was at 
one of its best moments. The sun had not gone ; the 
clear air seemed clearer for the tinge of rosiness, and the 
splendid bulk of the Peak, cut crisply against the dying 
light, looked down on a cluster of villas and hotels in 
which each structure seemed to stencil its Queen Anne 
jaggedness, or Late Colorado vagaries of outline, against a 
sky which invited stencilling. 

She was alone on the piazza. Some of the other peo- 
ple staying at the hotel (there were not many) had made 
up a party and driven over to the Garden of the Gods and 
Manitou ; two or three young men had gone on a walk to 
Cheyenne Canon ; some ladies, left behind, were in their 
rooms. It was just before the supper hour, and the ex- 
cursionists would soon be returning. Her father had left 
her half an hour before, saying that he wanted a walk ; he 
had not suggested that she should come with him, and she 
had made no movement to accompany him. She was glad 
to be quiet and to think. 

She sat thus for a long time, meditating about many 
things, and working intermittently at some embroidery in 
her hands, until suddenly she felt, rather than saw, a 
shadow fall between her and the sun, and, looking up, 
perceived Jasper. She rose instantly. A shock went 
through her. She felt herself gazing at him defiantly, 
and then she saw how very ill he looked. His face was 
almost spectral; its old firmness was gone. His hollow 
cheeks and cavernous eyes gave her a start. Her glance 
roved hastily over him ; she saw that his clothes, which 
had been used to set so trimly on his figure, hung on him 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 421 

with an almost shambling looseness. In her surprise she 
remained motionless, arrested half-way in her intention to 
go in and leave him standing there. He perceived his 
advantage, and said, in the thin and wasted voice which 
had replaced his former manly tones : 

" You are wondering at the change. Didn't you know 
that I had been ill ? " 

She made " Yes " with her lips. 

" But you didn't think it was so bad ? It was a close 
call." 

" You ought not to be out. You ought not to be up," 
she said. She forgot that she had not meant to speak to 
him. A ball of worsted with which she had been work- 
ing fell from her arms, and rolled out on the piazza. 
He stooped with his old precise courtesy, and restored 
it to her. 

" I had a very good reason for getting up," he said. 
" I heard that you had gone away — that you were leaving 
Maverick for good. I had meant to wait until I could 
come to see you in the usual way ; I should have man- 
aged it in a day or two. But your going made everything 
different." 

" Excuse me," rejoined Dorothy, hastily. " I can't 
allow you to include me in your plans." 

He smiled tolerantly. " You remember our last meet- 
ing, do you not ? You remember your promise. I have 
been waiting for your answer." 

In all the reflections which had contemned Jasper, and 
put him forever out of the case for her, she had not 
thought of this — that, in form, he was entitled to some 
word from her. She saw that it put her for the moment 
in the wrong with him. But she said, with disdain : 



422 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" I didn't think it necessary to tell you that I had found 
you out. I supposed you would guess that." 

Jasper bit his lip, and waited a moment before reply- 
ing. He had determined, in seeking this interview, to 
keep his temper. 

" I knew that you had resolved to break faith with me 
when I heard of your engagement to my brother. I don't 
see why I was bound to suppose that your reason was one 
discreditable to me." 

" Break faith with you ? " she repeated scornfully. 

" You won't say that you hadn't as good as promised 
me ; you won't pretend that if you had never said a word, 
you had not still given me the right to believe that I was 
something more to you than another. You distinguished 
me, you encouraged me ; it might not have meant great 
things in another case. But you haven't forgotten that 
we were once betrothed ; and you know a woman doesn't 
single out for favour a man who has once occupied that re- 
lation to her unless she means something in particular." 

The truth of this came over Dorothy helplessly. She 
gathered herself to confute it, but before she spoke she 
knew that he had, -in a sense, the right of it. It was not 
in her to lessen a fault because it was hers; rather it 
pressed on her the more closely. But she saw that if she 
let Jasper make this point, it must be the end of every- 
thing. 

" Does it really seem to you that you have a right to 
expect the same consideration as other men ? " she asked, 
looking into his eyes. 

" Why not ? You give it to him." 

Dorothy caught her breath as he said this, not bitterly 
or heatedly, but with the quiet manner of stating a con- 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 423 

sideration which she had omitted. She saw all that he 
meant ; it quelled her, and beat her down. She glanced 
at him where he stood with his back to the sun, support- 
ing himself lightly against a pillar, and fixing her with a 
glimmering smile. She opened her lips to speak, and 
closed them again, thinking better of what she had been 
going to say. But in a moment she raised her head, and 
said quickly, " I can't discuss that with you," and made 
a motion to pass him. 

He put out a gentle hand to stay her. " Please don't 
go yet, Miss Maurice. I've left a sick-bed and come a 
long way to see you. I'm sure you won't refuse to hear 
me. You have not been fair." He did not strike this 
note at hazard. She stopped ; he had known she must 
stop. " If you don't think me worthy of ordinary usage 
because of my treatment of him, what do you think of 
his treatment of me ? " 

The question sent a chill through her ; she knew what 
she had thought of it. Was that still her thought ? Con- 
fronted with her own sense of Philip's act balanced in 
this sort against her sense of Jasper's, she had suddenly 
the need to take refuge in any denial of her old feeling. 
She could not bear to think, even for that passing mo- 
ment, that a feeling of hers was sanctioning his compari- 
son. For a moment no answer befriended her; it was 
because from one point of view there was no answer, she 
saw. But the necessity to defend him, to cry out against 
this odious grouping, brought her the certainty — the sud- 
den, illuminating certainty — that hers was the other point 
of view. She saw surely, for the first time, that the mood 
of her talk with Deed was a finality ; that love had con- 
quered in her. It was her love that spoke now. 



424 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" And have you the courage to think the two cases in 
any way alike ? " she said. 

He had counted on her inward assent to the sound- 
ness of his position. He had it ; but he was dealing with 
another force which he could not measure. He was 
shaken by the assurance with which she answered. Was 
he mistaken, then ? Had she not thrown Philip over 
because she hated the injury he had done him? He had 
reckoned on this, and on the revulsion of feeling towards 
the injured one which he had imagined in her generous 
nature. Taking his own act for a moment from what he 
supposed to be her standpoint, and putting it at its worst 
(he knew what to think of it himself, but he could fancy 
her ignorant objections to it readily enough), in what way 
could she in justice feel it to be more heinous than 
Philip's? Jasper was, of course, better at almost any- 
thing than in estimating the moral value of his own 
actions ; his sincerity in believing them " all right " from 
the standpoint of a man who didn't pretend to the 
priggishness of being better than his neighbours dis- 
abled his usual cleverness at this point. But he saw 
his mistake, and manoeuvred an inward retreat, and 
brought himself into line at another place before he an- 
swered. 

"Suppose I say I have that courage?" He stroked 
his mustache lightly. Its rich, bright abundance made 
the cheek behind it seem paler. 

She met his eye fearlessly. " I should ask you if you 
had given your brother back the share in the ranch you 
took from him if I believed you." 

" Why should I ? " 

" Why should you ? " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 425 

" Yes. It is mine, for one tiling ; but that apart, he 
hasn't done as much for me." 

" But he has restored the mine to you — he has surren- 
dered everything." 

" The mine, yes ; but not everything. There is a mat- 
ter of $5,000." 

" What do you mean ? " She swept a thousand possi- 
bilities with her mental vision while she waited for his 
answer, and rejected them one after another. 

" My precious brother negotiated the loan of that sum 
on the security of the mine, I find. That was one of the 
first things he did with his borrowed claim." 

" It is not true," said Dorothy, simply. 

" You might ask your father." 

" My father ? " exclaimed she. 

" Philip borrowed it for him. It was at a time when 
your father found it inconvenient to owe me as much as 
that." He smiled with intention. 

" Do you mean to say that — that — " she gasped. 

" That I had the presumption to lend your father as 
much money as that? Yes. I suppose I mustn't expect 
you to like it, but I did it." 

" And he — he took it from Mm to pay you ? " 

Jasper nodded. She gave a little moan, and sank into 
one of the seats on the piazza. 

The young men who had gone for a walk to Cheyenne 
Canon were visible on the road before the hotel. Their 
woollen stockings and knee-breeches were covered with 
dust ; they came along at a swinging pace, laughing and 
talking. They passed into the house through the wide 
entrance, casting a glance of polite curiosity at the intent 
group at the further end of the piazza. 



426 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Will you do me a kindness ? " she asked in a husky 
voice, as he dropped into the seat beside her. He pro- 
tested his eagerness. " Go away, please ! " she entreated. 

" I beg your pardon," exclaimed Jasper, as if he had 
not understood. 

" Please go away. You haye made me hear it. I 
couldn't help that. But you won't stay, now." She 
paused, and clasped her hands before her. A wretched 
sigh escaped her. " Oh, how could he ? " she cried to 
herself, in the words she had once used for Philip. 

" You are not fair, Miss Maurice," he said, rising with 
dignity. " Am I to blame because my brother has chosen 
to borrow money on my mine, and has failed to return it 
to me ? Am I to blame because your father chooses, for 
reasons of his own, to make such an arrangement with 
your affianced husband ? " 

" Oh, don't ! don't ! Have you no manliness ? " She 
felt her cheeks burning with the horror of the ideas that 
were coming to her ; she turned away to hide their shame- 
ful confession. She was trying not to hate her father; 
she was searching for excuses for him. Was it to this, 
then, that Mr. Deed's allusion to Philip's motives pointed? 
Was it her father that she must blame for what Philip 
had done ? 

" Is the truth so hard, then ? " Jasper was asking. 
" Would you rather believe what you wish to believe ? 
Would you rather think well of certain persons, even if 
you knew it was not the truth ? But I needn't ask. You 
take the side towards which you are drawn for the mo- 
ment — like a woman ; and everything is indifferent to 
you but the illusions by which you make yourself think 
that the right side at all hazards. The truth doesn't 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 427 

matter to you — nor justice, nor fairness. You needn't 
tell me that ; I know it," he said. 

She winced ; the stroke was well aimed. " You know 
much better than that," she answered feebly. 

" Say rather that I used to know better. But I knew 
it of another woman, I think. The woman I used to 
know, Miss Maurice, couldn't be so resolved to think 
badly of a man who has openly taken his right, and so 
determined, at all costs, to think well of a man who trades 
on his brother's ignorance to cheat him out of his prop- 
erty." She shrank where she sat, and he pressed home 
his advantage. " Is it the motive that makes the differ- 
ence ? Is it so wrong, then, to take what belongs to one, 
without malice, or double thoughts, or hope of any gain 
but the plain one ; and is it so right to take what does 
not belong to one, with the admirable motive of revenge, 
and the other admirable motive of winning a sneaking 
advantage with a woman ? Ah," cried he, bitterly, " it 
makes a difference who does such things, and even more 
it makes a difference for whom they are done ! " 

" Oh no, no ! " she began vehemently. But she sank 
back in her chair helplessly. She shook her head. " You 
would not understand." 

His voice took a note of tenderness as he dropped 
again into the seat beside her, and said in low tones : " Are 
you sure of that, Miss Maurice ? I think I know what 
you have been thinking of me these last few weeks, since 
we met. You have heard things about me which couldn't 
make you think well of me. But I want you to do me 
the justice to remember that they were not told you by 
my friends. There are always two sides. It would be 
fair to hear mine before judging. But I don't ask you to 



428 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

do that. Suppose I admit all that you are thinking ; sup- 
pose I say that I see it, in a degree, from your own point 
of view ; suppose I agree to make it right with my father, 
to restore what he thinks I came by unfairly ; suppose, in 
other words, I agree to take your view — would you care, 
would it make a difference to you ? " 

She glanced up at him in bewilderment. " I'm not 
sure that I know what you mean," she said quickly. " I 
couldn't care that you should agree with me, merely to 
agree. You must know that. But the other — " She 
paused a moment. " You must be equally sure that I 
should be glad of anything that made you think it right 
to do that," she said gravely. It was difficult to think of 
anything but the near and personal trouble which was 
gnawing at her heart ; but his suggestion opened vistas — 
it stimulated and engaged her. 

" Would you care so much then ? " he asked, regard- 
ing her curiously. 

She hesitated a moment. " Yes ; very much," she 
said heartily. " I have seen your father. Knowing him 
has given me a great wish to help him. If you could see 
how what you did has wounded and broken him, you 
would wish to do what you say even more than I could 
wish to have you do it." 

" He hasn't treated me well," said Jasper, laconic- 
ally. 

" No," rejoined Dorothy, eagerly. " It was only what 
you might have expected him to do ; it was only what he 
had a right to do by the code most of us live by ; but he 
too feels that it was a mistake. Or perhaps I ought to 
say that he feels it wasn't as right as it seemed to him at 
the time." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 429 

" Well, that's a step," admitted Jasper. And he 
added, " He did me a beastly injury." 

" And what had you done to him ? " 

" I had taken my rights." 

" Yes," said Dorothy, with intention. 

"Do you mean that they were not my rights? He 
had given them to me himself." 

" No ; I don't mean that," said she, quietly. Her as- 
sent maddened him more than any denial could have done. 
It gave him a feeling of helplessness absolutely singular 
in his experience. 

" Oh, I know what you mean," he retorted bitterly. 
" You mean that you despise me." Philip's words came 
back to her, and she wondered how she had ever borne 
to hear them from him, and allowed him to go from her 
feeling that what he said was true. 

" No," she said gently. 

" It's the same thing. I don't thank you for the dif- 
ference. But you shall think differently of me ! " He 
rose quickly and stood before her. "Listen. I have 
passed three days face to face with death since we met 
last. Perhaps I am not the same man you have known 
in all respects." His husky, inadequate voice gave the 
statement meaning, almost gave it reality. " Would you 
believe me changed if I were to say so?" He looked 
closely at her. 

" I don't know," she said, looking up at him doubt- 
fully. A new light came into her eyes. " Such things 
do change a man." 

" You imply a doubt whether they would change me. 
But you shall believe it," he said fiercely. " I will go on 
to Maverick to-day and withdraw the suit against my 



430 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

father which is to come on to-morrow ; I will give up to 
my brother the share in the ranch which my father claims 
for him." 

" You will ! " exclaimed she. " Oh, I shall be glad for 
your father." Her eyes left him musingly in a happy look. 

" And for me ? " 

She glanced inquiringly at him. She brought herself 
back to the consideration of his relation to his proposal 
with an effort. " Oh, I shall be very glad for you, too, of 
course." 

His face fell. " Is that what you mean ? " he asked. 
" Is that all you mean ? " 

"I shall feel it is good of you — from your point of 
view ; yes, very good." 

He bit his lip. It was hardly this measured approba- 
tion that he had sought. She saw the defeated look on 
his face, and with a movement of compassion and self- 
accusal, she rose, holding out her hand to him. " I shall 
think better of you, if that is what you mean. It is gen- 
erous, it is right." 

He held her hand firmly, searching her eyes with a 
piercing gaze. " How much better ? " he asked. 

She withdrew her hand. " What do you mean ? " she 
asked in confusion. 

" I am ready to do all that there is to do to show my 
sincerity." 

" Yes," assented she, bewildered; "that is true." 

" Will you do nothing for me ? " 

" What do you wish ? " 

" Believe in me again." He stooped over her. 

" I will. I do." She withdrew herself from him a 
little, vaguely alarmed by his manner. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 431 

" You know very well what I wish, Dorothy. Believe 
in me as you used to." 

" I can't do that," she said, looking into his eyes, un- 
faltering. Her breath came quickly. 

" Would it be such a miracle, then ? " 

She nodded. 

" Ah," cried he, " you can work for him ! " 

" It is not the same," she stammered. 

" No," he rejoined ; " it is not the same. It should 
be much more difficult. He won you from me through 
this mine." 

" Oh, don't say it ! " begged Dorothy. 

" And he has not scorned to take a more material 
profit from that villainy. What is he giving up ? You 
made that the test a little while ago. By that measure do 
I show so badly ? " 

" He will pay you the money," she said desper- 
ately. 

" Perhaps. I don't know. It wouldn't be unlike 
him, you must own, if he didn't. But can he give me 
back what else he has taken from me ? " 

"What?" she asked in a half whisper, though she 
knew what he would say. 

" You! Can he pay that debt? Can he give you 
back to me?" Dorothy dropped her eyes. He took her 
hand and bent over her tenderly. She seemed suddenly 
stricken powerless ; she could prevent nothing. " It is 
only you who can pay that debt for him," he said. 

His weakened voice had a winning note in its effect- 
iveness. For the space of an instant, while she stood 
there arraigning Philip, as he meant her to, and liking 
his own surrender as he had hoped, something in her — 
28 



432 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

an effect of nerves rather than of impulses, even the most 
trivial — responded to him. The plea was ingenious-, it 
addressed itself with overwhelming force to a whole side 
of her nature ; for a moment she felt as if she was about 
to be carried off her feet — towards what she knew not. 
Not away from Philip, certainly ; but at least towards the 
man by her side. She felt the dangerous stirrings of pity 
at her heart. But a moment later she glanced up and 
saw him watching her, and another thought came into 
her mind. 

Then she spoke. " It does not seem to me a debt ; 
but if it were, you must know that I could not pay it," 
she said steadily. 

A look of bitter disappointment crossed his counte- 
nance. 

"Do you mean that?" he asked, scanning her face. 

" Yes." 

" Yet you expect me to pay my debt," he said bitingly, 
" — what you regard as mine. You expect me to restore 
to my father and to him." It was a question, though he 
put it forth as a statement. 

" I expect nothing. You wish that for yourself, do 
you not?" 

Jasper smiled sardonically. " Do you suppose that I 
can wish for anything apart from my wish for you ? You 
don't know how I love you — you have never known. Say 
that we may be again as we once were, and you will see 
what I would be strong enough for. You could do what 
you would with me." 

Her eyes blazed with sudden intelligence. " Do you 
mean to say — do you dare to say," she said shakenly, " that 
you would only do what you have been proposing to do, if 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 433 

— that you would not do it unless — Oh ! oh ! And you 
offered it as a bribe ! Oh, go ! go ! " 

He caught her hands, and, prisoning them in his, 
looked down steadfastly into her eyes, with a long, intent, 
hungry look. An expression of acute misery came over 
his face. " Ah," he cried desperately, " now, you do de- 
spise me!" 

She lowered her eyes. She did not answer. He 
dashed his hand to his face, and without a word walked 
quickly away from her side, and out into the roadway 
before the hotel, with the uncertain steps of a sick man. 

Dorothy stood where he had left her. She heard his 
retreating steps, but did not look round. Her eyes were 
fixed on the rosy summit of the peak. As she looked the 
sun suddenly went down. A chill was borne to her 
through the air, and she started. She perceived that she 
must have been standing so a long time. She put her 
hand to her face. There were tears in her eyes, too. She 
saw her father coming towards the hotel from the direc- 
tion opposite to that which Jasper had taken, A chill 
went through her for another reason. 



XXXIII. 



Maegaket stood in the window of her sitting-room 
at the Centropolis House, which commanded a view of the 
arrival platform of the railway, and exchanged signals 
with Deed as he alighted from his train, on his return 
from Pifion. She saw Philip follow him, with their hand- 
luggage, and as he set it down on the platform, he too 



434 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

glanced up at her window, and, catching her eye, waved 
his hat towards her, with a smile of greeting. Then Vert- 
ner seized upon them, and she saw him going through the 
hopeless struggle to tell them only so much of the truth 
as he thought they would like ; with a beating heart she 
saw her husband pressing, insisting, and finally pinning 
him, and Vertner going through the stages of impotent 
yielding, burlesquing his helplessness with desperate ges- 
tures. She saw her husband cowed and dazed, as she had 
feared, by his news, and saw Philip fall upon Vertner with 
questions. Then it was Vertner who took the initiative, 
and he forcibly pulled into the conference the conductor 
of the train, who was passing them, left them for a mo- 
ment to dash into the hotel, bestirred himself, bustled 
about, and finally pushed Philip on the train again, 
handed his valise up to him, and waved a gay and cheer- 
ing hand to him, as the train pulled out of the station. 
Deed, when he had seen the last of the train, turned and 
challenged Vertner again, and they talked soberly for some 
moments. 

They were palpitating moments to Margaret. Since 
Dorothy had so suddenly left Maverick with her father 
she had been in a distracted state. It seemed as if she 
was almost to blame for it — as if she could have prevented 
it if she had not gone at Mrs. Felton's invitation for a 
long drive, on that day, to Loredano; and returned only 
to find them both gone, leaving no trace save a confused 
and hurried note from Dorothy, which told her nothing. 
She quailed before the thought of what this failure of his 
hope must be to her husband. 

She heard his quick step in the passage, and ran to 
admit him. When she had kissed him she searched his 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 435 

face, and withdrew herself from his embrace in alarm, 
recognizing the set look of resolve she remembered from 
the fatal day on which he had left her to go and right 
himself with Jasper. 

He went to the window, while she watched him anx- 
iously, and cast a glance up and down the track. Then 
he dropped restlessly into a seat, and fixed his eyes deject- 
edly on the carpet. She took a seat opposite him ; when 
he glanced up she was shocked by his haggard and des- 
perate face. Again she saw in it that look of a man whose 
fight was done. 

" I've got to stop this," he said briefly. 

"What, James?" 

" The whole of it. Have things been going so well 
with us for the last six months that I need say ? You 
know what's happened ? " 

She nodded, with her eyes intent upon him. 

" She's gone ; Jasper's with her ; I've failed. That's 
the end of it. I say I've got to stop it." 

" Oh, I shall be glad — glad I " she whispered, trying to 
trust him because she had learned that lesson, but in- 
wardly filled with anguishing doubt. 

" I've been a fool. Since Jasper paid us his visit at 
Mineral Springs I've known that ; you showed it to me ; 
and instead of owning up on the spot, and doing what 
was left to redeem you and me from the consequences of 
my folly, I've been blundering on since trying to deny it 
to myself, and trying hard to believe that I could invent 
some new way to whip the devil around the stump, and 
avoid what I — what I didn't want to do," he ended hus- 
kily. " It would have worked if it had only been a ques- 
tion of myself or you ; I dare say I could have found 



436 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

obstinacy, and pride, and reckless selfishness enough for 
that." He sighed. " But Philip makes all the differ- 
ence." 

" Yes," said Margaret, still in a whisper. 

" Even with him, I thought I could help him to dodge 
the penalty; I thought I could hoax, or blind, or buy off 
fate in his case. But Jasper has got in his blow in return 
already ; the infernal business of give and take has begun. 
The boy has got to repeat my experience, unless — unless 
— he's paid ; he's restored ; it makes no difference. There 
is a sore underneath. We must cure that first. My fault 
is so hopelessly mixed up with his that nothing he can do 
can really help him. It's I who have to do." 

" But what, James ? " cried Margaret, in an alarm she 
could no longer hide. " But what ? " 

He returned her frightened look with a tender 
one. " Jasper's suit against me comes on to-mor- 
row." 

" Yes," she assented breathlessly. 

" If it is decided in my favour the fight merely shifts ; 
it doesn't end. If it is decided against me, am I likely to 
bear it well ? Do you think I could resist striking back ? 
That is the way it has been with me ; that is the- way it 
will be with me. It's endless. Ah, Margaret, we know 
that, don't we ? Eesistance can't stop it ; it piles it up. 
And if that is true for us, how much more it will be true 
for Philip ! The fight must be between brothers, there, 
with none of the habit of forbearance on either side that 
makes certain things impossible between father and son. 
I can't see him marching helplessly into that miserable 
maze, and involving an innocent girl as I involved you 
and him. I can't. I've got to stop it." 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 437 

" But how? Fighting only makes it worse. You say 
so yourself," she said tentatively. 

He stared into her eyes a moment. 

" I'm not going to fight," he said. He drew a long 
breath as he rose. She got up and came to him, and, slip- 
ping her arm in his, looked up into his face. He glanced 
down at her ; his eyes gleamed with the exaltation of his 
resolve. " I'm going to surrender." 

A joyous light dawned in her eyes. 

" Do you mean that you will give him back the ranch 
— that you will restore everything as it was before — be- 
fore—" 

" Before I took what belonged to me ? Yes, Margaret ; 
I'm going to try your remedy, whatever you like to call it. 
I've used up all my own. Don't think I like it. I loathe 
it. But I'm going to do it. I shall sell the Lady 
Bountiful' as soon as spring opens, and buy the range 
back from Snell at once. It will be easy enough ; this 
bluffing suit of Jasper's frightens him, though his title is 
perfectly good ; and I shall let Jasper know immediately 
— before the trial." 

" James ! " she murmured, clutching his arm, and 
looking up into his face, lovingly, admiringly, happily. 

" Don't praise it, Margaret," he cried, turning hastily 
away from her shining look, as from something to which 
he had no claim, " or I sha'n't have the heart to do it. 
And God knows I don't want to do it." He walked away 
from her to the window, and went on, with his back to 
her : " It's right ; you needn't say it ; I 'know it. It's 
right, and it's the only thing to do, just as it was the only 
thing to do in the beginning. I see the folly and error 
of fighting evil with evil, fast enough, if that's what you 



438 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

want me to see : the way to conquer it is to yield to it, to 
give it more than it asks." He turned towards her with 
his hands in his pockets. " The mistaken way is to 
strike back, and to that mistake there is no end. I've 
learned that. But it's hard, and if I knew a decent way 
to dodge it I shouldn't be a hero about it. Don't im- 
agine it." 

For answer to this she simply put her arms about his 
neck, and drew his lips to hers. 

" You are hero enough for me," she said. 



XXXIV. 



Dorothy drew back a pace as her father came up to 
her on the piazza, while Jasper walked away in the other 
direction. Maurice was smiling, and wiping his brow 
with one hand ; in the other he held his parson's wide- 
awake. 

" It's warm walking," he said. " Who was it who just 
left you ? I thought his back looked like Jasper's." 

" It was Mr. Deed," she said, trying to find her voice. 

"Ah, well, he will be coming back, then. But I'm 
sorry you did not keep him." 

" He is not coming back," said Dorothy, in the same 
still, controlled voice. "I want to ask you something, 
father," she added, with an effort. 

He looked at her inquiringly. 

" Well, my dear, what is it ? " He turned half about, 
pursuing Jasper's retreating figure absently. " I'm sorry 
you did not keep him," he said. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 439 

" Listen, father." She laid a hand on his arm, and he 
looked around at her, surprised by her tone." Did you 
borrow a large sum from him — from this Mr. Deed ? " 

He started. 

" He has been telling you that ? " cried he. 

She went on, intent upon her purpose. " Is it true ? " 

He bit his lip. " Yes ; it's true." 

" And did you make Philip take his brother's mine to 
pay that debt for you, when — when — " 

He gazed at her sternly ; he seized her wrist. 

"What is the matter with you, Dorothy? Are you 
mad ? Don't let one of your impulsive ideas get the 
better of you. They make you absurd ; they are very 
young." 

" Is it true? " she repeated in a dry, estranged voice. 

" No," returned he, doggedly ; " of course it isn't 
true." 

" But you took the money from him to pay him ? " 

He released his hold on her wrist, and shuffled his 
hand into his pockets. He shrugged his shoulders. 

She stared at him irresolutely. " Will you answer me, 
father ? " A cold terror crept about her heart. " Did 
you?" 

He forced his vagrant eye to face her. " Excuse me, 
Dorothy. There are matters which I have always re- 
served to myself. They are not a part of your province. 
Please understand that this is one of them." 

She put this away with a gesture. "Answer me, 
please, father," she said coldly. " Did you ? " 

" Yes ; if you must know," he jerked out at last. 
"But—" 

Her face grew very white and rigid. " That is all I 



440 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

want to know," she said. She clutched the work in her 
hands against her breast, and went quickly past him, and 
into the hotel. 

She rose early the next morning, and taking her 
breakfast in her room, to avoid meeting her father (it had 
to come, but she did not feel strong enough for it yet), 
she walked out in the early morning sunshine to the Gar- 
den of the Gods. As she went through the splendid 
gateway, the two towering masses of rock caught up her 
thought to the level of their lonely summits ; they seemed 
to swim up there in the air, in the isolation of a serene 
and immemorial past ; they made human troubles appear 
small and fleeting. She walked on, finding a kind of 
medicine in the sweet, stimulating air and the bright 
sunshine. 

In the first moments of her humiliation she had 
thought that she must seek refuge from her father some- 
where, and Margaret had occurred to her as a resource. 
Her shame for him and for herself seemed in the begin- 
ning a feeling she could never face by his side. Their 
life together was too close to leave an opening for com- 
promise ; if she was to remain with him she knew that it 
must be as his daughter, with all that the word had 
meant for her since her mother's death ; and she did not 
see how that could be ; it implied a perfect trust and 
understanding between them which no longer existed. 
But she had seen immediately that she could not go away 
from him even for the moment ; her permanent feeling 
of loyalty, which she had never allowed to falter, would 
not suffer it ; if she could find it in her heart to leave 
him upon one impulse, she saw that she must straightway 
return to him upon another. The protecting, almost 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 441 

motherly, instinct which had taught her the thousand 
cares for his happiness that had so long compassed him 
about would not let her forego her place by his side. 
Her eyes were opened (even if they were not so widely 
opened as she supposed), and she seemed to be seeing 
her father through a new and loathly medium, which 
distorted all that she had trusted and loved in him ; 
but the love and trust were actually stronger than 
all newer feelings. She saw this almost at first, and 
afterwards it was borne in upon her : she took strength 
from the belief to face the prospect of the days lived by 
his side, which seemed now to stretch in a dismal proces- 
sion far into an unlovely future. 

She had thought of going to Margaret at first, as I 
have said, but that resort presented difficulties, even if 
she had been resolved to go somewhere, or to some one. 
She could not tell her about her father ; and if she could, 
she was not sure that Margaret, with all her fineness of 
perception in certain directions, would understand. 

No, it was not Margaret for whom something in her 
seemed to cry out. She felt bruised, disheartened, dis- 
illusioned; she longed to lean on a different kind of 
strength. She perceived, in a moment, that she was 
thinking of Philip ; and the moment after faced the fact, 
with all its consequences, without disquiet. She saw him 
suddenly as her only refuge, and rejoiced, after a tremu- 
lous thought, in seeing him so. 

His blundering force — not sharpened to a point, like 
his brother's, but so sure, large, restful — seemed to her, as 
her heart went out to him in the exile to which she had 
condemned him, the most excellent thing in the world. 
She wondered where he was ; she had said that she would 



442 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

see him ; he would have come back with his father to 
Maverick. But when he found her gone, which way 
would he turn ? The thought came to her that he would 
fancy she had fled from Maverick, of her own motion, to 
avoid the consequences of her rash yielding to his father's 
entreat}'. It was suddenly intolerable to her that he 
should think that, and she thought she would walk on 
through the Garden of the Gods to Manitou, and send a 
telegram to Beatrice at Maverick to say where she was ; 
she had promised her that much, and had not kept her 
promise because her father, for his own reasons, had asked 
her not to. 

The unquestioning obedience which had gone with 
her unquestioning trust was broken down by her new 
vision of her father, and the knowledge that he would 
not wish a thing was not the final hindrance it had 
seemed yesterday. She quickened her pace, believing for 
a moment that her strong desire that Philip should not 
think what she fancied him thinking alone controlled 
her; but the need for him — the need for his strength, 
his unconscious manliness, for that open-air quality in 
him which seemed to annul difficulties and anxieties, for 
his wholesomeness and genuineness — came over her in an 
irresistible flood. And when she had recognized this, she 
did not deny its meaning to herself in any way ; she knew 
that it was he whom she wished ; and not for any other 
reason than for one obvious and sufficient one. 

She had imagined, altogether afresh, while she lay 
awake during the night, the persuading causes which 
had led him to the act that had separated them, and saw 
her father in them all. In her passionate wish to excul- 
pate Philip she perhaps implicated her father, in fancy, 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 443 

more deeply than she could have alleged any solid war- 
rant for. But, indeed, in the strenuous swing to the op- 
posite point of view which had been operated within her 
with the swiftness and certainty of her woman's processes, 
she now found it as abundantly easy to discover excuses 
for him as she had before found it abundantly hard. And 
the knowledge that her father had injured him in injur- 
ing her was not the reason that it should have been for 
wishing that she might never have to face him again. On 
the contrary. 

The rattle of a horse's hoofs echoed behind her on the 
hard road along which she was walking, and she turned 
and saw Philip coming towards her. He reined in his 
horse as he came near. Her limbs trembled under her, 
and she experienced an inconsequent impulse to flight ; 
but she walked on until his voice behind her brought her 
to a halt, and she forced herself to turn and look towards 
him. He raised his sombrero as he drew in his animal 
by her side, and with the same motion threw himself off, 
and stood beside her. He put out his hand silently, and 
she slipped hers into his waiting clasp, shyly and limply 
at first, and then, as her little hand was swallowed up in 
the embrace of his big one, and she felt him bending over 
her inquiringly, anxiously, tenderly, she surrendered it to 
him wholly, giving back his firm grip with her own quick, 
warm, vigorous clasp. Then she looked up at him, and 
read the suffering through which she had caused him 
to pass in the drawn lines of his strong, browned, honest 
face. 

" Your father told me I should find you here," he said. 

"Yes," she answered, dropping her eyes. 

" You are not angry with me for coming ? " 



444 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

She glanced up at him again, her eyes filling perilous- 
ly, helplessly. In that flashing gaze he saw himself for- 
given and blessed. He took her in his arms. 

" But you must tell me something first," she said, 
some moments later, when they had settled every- 
thing. 

" How much I love you ? " He shook his head, with 
a smile. " I can't." 

" No, no ; this is something serious." 

" Ah ! " returned he, prolonging the intonation. 

" Oh, you know what I mean," she cried, answering 
the laughing look in his eyes. " This is a different kind 
of seriousness. I want to ask you something." 

" Well ? " inquired he, trying to be as sober as the oc- 
casion appeared to demand. 

" How much did my father have to do with — with 
what you did ? " 

It was a dangerous moment. He temporized, as- was 
his habit. " How — your father ? " he asked. " I don't 
understand, Dorothy." 

" Oh, yes, you do. I know that he had something to 
do with it. He has owned that to me. It is shameful ; 
but I must ask you. I can't let you go on, I can't go on 
myself, not knowing what his actual share was in — in 
what you did." 

" But you have forgiven me. What difference can 
anything else make ? " 

" Does it make no difference if he really did what I 
have been accusing you of — and did it without even the 
courage to do it for himself ? Does it make no difference 
if he did it, in fact, and chose you — you^ Philip — to do it 
for him — that it's his wrong, and that he's let me make 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 445 

you suffer for it ? No ; if that's true, we have wronged 
you too deeply. I couldn't — " 

" Don't say it, Dorothy ! You are mad. The wrong, 
whatever it was, was all mine." 

" My father profited by it. You found a large sum 
for him. I know that. How can I know that he did not 
instigate it ? " she asked desperately. 

He did not answer for a moment. He felt himself 
halted. For a single instance he felt a kind of impatience 
stealing upon his easy-going nature ; but surely he could 
grant her this last barrier against full and actual surren- 
der, this little withholding of herself from him. She 
doubtless took it for a sincere objection. The reflection 
lent him a patience which taught him a defence stronger 
in its weakness than any other could have been in its 
strength. " Rubbish, Dorothy ! " he said ; " rubbish ! No 
one had anything to do with what I did except myself — 
unless it was some devil in me. Your father was entirely 
outside of the matter, and the money you are thinking of 
was paid back to Jasper long ago." 

" Oh, was it? I am so glad." 

" Well, I was glad to pay it," he rejoined soberly. He 
heaved a deep sigh of relief as she turned away, and for- 
gave himself for so much of untruth as there was in his 
statement about her father's complicity as he caught sight 
of the glad smile on her face, and remembered how hard 
it would be to say exactly what the truth was about that. 
He knew that she could not always rest content with this ; 
but for the moment it served, and if it came to another 
moment he hoped to be strong enough for it. 

" He must pay you," she said. 

"Who?" 



416 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Papa. It is his debt — doubly his." 

" Of course," assented Philip, unfalteringly, turning 
the sharp corner with the quick command of resource 
which this conversation was teaching him. " I have his 
notes ; he is to pay me interest on them, and take them 
up as fast as he has the money." He said this without 
smiling, though a humorous memory of a long list of such 
arrangements made by himself on his own behalf mingled 
in his mind with the absurdity of the idea that Maurice 
would redeem his obligations. " It is simply transferring 
a debt from a hard creditor to an easy one," he said. 

She wondered if he did not see how this, which looked 
so innocent in his phrase, had involved her, how the trans- 
action had simply used her, how she had been bandied 
about in it by her father like a negotiable security. She 
did not blame Philip for his share in it ; she felt sure — 
too sure — of the absolute generosity of his motives ; but 
she turned scarlet with a new sense of shame for her 
father. 

" And you will let him pay you ? " 

His candid, good-natured eyes did not quail, as she 
clung to him, studying his face. 

" Let him ! I'll sue him, if you like," retorted he, 
fondly. And it occurred to him that this might not be 
from every point of view an event without its rewards. 
The talk which he had had with Maurice before -coming 
on to her had made several things plain to him ; none of 
them increased his fondness for Maurice. 

Dorothy had to laugh. " You needn't do that," she 
said. They turned their faces towards Colorado Springs, 
and walked on through the rock-strewn park — as empty 
at this hour as that other park in which they had lately 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 447 

parted so definitely, so finally. They found a number of 
things to say to each other which it would not be fair to 
repeat. Philip led his horse with his arm through the 
bridle, and Dorothy retraced by his side the steps she had 
lately taken alone. 

The shining of the sun had seemed very good to her a 
few moments before ; but it was a dull radiance compared 
to that which fell upon them as they walked together — 1 
walking, as she felt, into a new life, into an unexplored 
but happy future, into a future made up out of the most 
airy but the most substantial materials, a future guided 
and guarded by love. 

She told him that she knew she could not guess how 
she had made him suffer ; but if anything could teach her, 
it would be her own suffering in giving him that pain. It 
was foolish to talk of that ; but how were they to be prop- 
erly happy if they did not let themselves remember a time 
when they hadn't been ? 

But they were, in fact, too happy in having found each 
other again by any means to study very minutely the pro- 
cess by which they had rediscovered that they were neces- 
sary to each other. Only Philip must sometimes say, for 
mere uneasiness in his restoration to her trust : 

" You'd better say again that you forgive me. Or per- 
haps you'd better say you don't. If you say you do, it 
makes me happy, of course : but that isn't the point. 
You'd better harden your heart for your own sake." 

She merely smiled at him. 

" Dorothy," he went on more seriously, " I'm really all 
that you thought me. Your pardon is heaven to me; 
one must have known the other thing to know the sweet- 
ness of your trust ; but I mustn't abuse it. I did exactly 
29 



448 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

what you said. I took the ' Little Cipher ' from Jasper, 
knowing it to be his by all the laws that make right right 
and wrong wrong for men anywhere ; and I saw long ago 
how it was all you said, and more than you said, touching 
you and me and our love. You'd better take back your 
forgiveness." 

She shook her head. " I can't take back what I never 
gave. If I were to forgive you, I should have to judge 
first ; and " — with a little lift of her eyes — " I can't judge 
you, Philip, any more." And then, in a moment, to turn 
him from this difficult subject, " How did you leave your 
father ? " she asked. 

" Ah, it's to him I owe you ! " he cried. " He never 
said it; he merely brought me your message. But I 
know it well enough. It's from him you've taken a pic- 
turesque version of the facts which enables you to think 
well of me. If you had known him, Dorothy, you would 
have been on your guard ; you would have understood that 
he never sees quite straight; he sees too heartily, too 
warmly, and too hot-headedly to be a safe witness — espe- 
cially where he cares. He cares so much — that splendid, 
downright father of mine ! " 

" Oh, he's good ! I have been so sorry for him. It 
was being sorry for him that first helped me to be a 
little sorry for you, you know." 

" Yes, I know," he answered vaguely to her roguish 
smile, rather than to her words (it is difficult to confine 
one's replies altogether to the theme of actual discourse 
in these situations ; there are interruptions). He added 
in a moment : " You couldn't have minded about me for 
any one else's sake so safely. It is always safe to do a 
thing because you like father ! " 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 449 

" Oh, I don't know for whose sake I sent that mes- 
sage," she declared ambiguously. She flashed a look at 
him, and challenged his smile with, " I didn't say it was 
for yours." 

" No," laughed Philip. 

" No ; I think it was for my own," she assured herself. 
" I wanted to make sure that I had been right." 

She joined in his smile. " Well, you're sure now," 
he said. 

" Am I ? But now you see I don't know whether I 
am right to be sure." They could laugh at anything, and 
they laughed at this. 

" That you were wrong ? " queried he. " No ; I 
shouldn't like you to be sure of that. You were alto- 
gether in the right, Dorothy," he told her more seriously. 
" Your only mistake is in pardoning me. Take it back, 
while there is time." 

" I'll see about it," rejoined she, with a baffling glance 
at him which temporarily put an end to the discussion. 
" But how did you find us ? How did you know where 
we were ? " she asked suddenly, as she disengaged herself. 
This simple question had not occurred to either of them 
hitherto. 

" Why, I didn't find you, exactly ; I partly stumbled 
on you. But the finding, such as it was, is Vertner's. 
His acquaintance with the whole fraternity of railway 
conductors was a blessing for once. One of them remem- 
bered that you had travelled with him this far. After 
that I had- to hunt you up, or rather your father, and he 
sent me on.." 

"It wasn't fair of the conductor to tell," she re- 
marked. 



450 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" No," said Philip, with equal seriousness ; " that's 
what I thought." 

Nonsense like this floated on the current of their 
mood, and they welcomed it as a defence against more 
serious things. There was so much to be said between 
them that by a common impulse they avoided trying to 
say any of it, except as they said it in the interchange of 
silent glances. They seemed to themselves to have plenty 
of time before them ; they best realized their happiness 
for the moment through a sense of the leisure which 
allowed them to feel that they could play with it. 

Long silences fell between them, and they would walk 
on, hearing no sound but their own footsteps, and those 
of the horse following them ; and at these times they 
let the sunshine, the gay, brisk, bright morning, which 
seemed made for them, and the massive beauty of the 
park, express their bliss for them in their various voices. 
But they had to talk, too, and they spoke a good deal, in 
a fragmentary, unserions way, of their future ; they specu- 
lated luxuriously about it, they made and unmade plans, 
they warned each other affectionately that neither must 
build too much on the virtue and solidity of the other's 
character in scheming this life together. But they said 
they would be constant, and that must be their sure 
armour against all doubts and differences — the certainty 
that they were all in all to each other. They owned so- 
berly the differences of character existing between them, 
but they agreed that it was largely these which had 
drawn them together, and they promised each other to re- 
spect them always, if for no other reason ; they said that 
they should rejoice in them. 

Philip told her that he should not even be jealous of 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 45 1 

her having all the sense in the family; every one had 
been telling him, since he had been old enough to make 
mistakes, that what he needed was a "balance-wheel"; 
he should have one now, and nothing could be more use- 
less than a balance-wheel that kept quiet. He said he 
should be rid, now, of the left-handed compliment that 
he had excellent " works," but no contrivance for keeping 
them in running order, and making them perform their 
functions. It appeared that their functions would be 
brilliant, if the lack were supplied. JSTow they should 
see ! If they weren't, it would be her fault. 

" Oh, I sha'n't be strict with you, if that's what you 
are hoping for," she declared ; " I've had enough of that." 

" But I haven't. It's the only thing for me. I shall 
never be of any use without it. And you must remember 
I've got to earn our living. When you see that, perhaps 
sternness will come easier to you." 

" I don't know. Shall I never have a holiday? " 

" Well, you'll have to spend a good deal of your time 
forgiving me for the daily assortment of folly and reck- 
lessness. You might lie off for that." 

" Ah, that's all very well. But, as Mr. Vertner says, 
' Where do I come in? ' " 

" Dear old Vertner ! " exclaimed Philip, in the over- 
flow of his liking for the world. " What a first-rate, un- 
principled, warm-hearted, loyal good fellow he is ! He 
wouldn't like your not coming in handsomely. But 
where don't you come in? I don't see but you've got 
your work cut out for you." 

"My work, yes; but my pleasure — how about that? 
If I'm to spend all my time correcting your faults, how 
shall I ever find a moment to enjoy them ? " 



452 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

" Enjoy them ? " 

" Well, of course I like them. How should I like you 
if I didn't?" 

" Yes," admitted Philip, meditatively ; " they do cover 
most of the territory in sight." 

She laid a silencing hand on his lips. " Hush ! " she 
said. " It is I who am all faults. You will find it all 
you can do to get along with me." 

He stopped short in the road along which they were 
going, and took her in his arms. He looked down into 
her face for a long moment tenderly. 

" I'll risk it," he said. 



XXXV. 



" Well, that's over ! " exclaimed Vertner, one after- 
noon a month later, as he opened the door of their house 
for his wife, and followed her in. " I must say I don't 
feel like coming back home and settling down to the old 
humdrum routine after an event like this. Can't we 
have some champagne ? " 

"In the middle of the afternoon?" 

" No ; I suppose not. But I feel the need of some ex- 
citement. Perhaps we have reached the climax, though. 
They looked very happy going away, didn't they ? 

Beatrice seated herself provisionally in her wedding 
finery, stooping first to pick up one of Edward's toys 
from the floor. They had drifted into the room in which 
Margaret had borne to see Deed go from her in anger on 
another wedding-day. The iron pyrites still winked from 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 453 

the what-not ; the Navajo blanket continued to do duty 
as a portiere ; the rag carpet was on the floor ; the 
stained -glass window, through which the sun was shining 
at the moment, continued to take itself without serious- 
ness. 

" Yes," said Beatrice, smoothing her silk thoughtfully 
with long, ruminating fingers ; " they did look very happy 
going away. But do you suppose they will be able to 
keep it up ? " 

Vertner hovered restlessly about, without sitting down. 
" What makes you think they won't ? " he asked. 

" I didn't say they wouldn't. I was only wondering." 

Vertner sighed, and gave an absent touch to the lav- 
ender tie of festal effect which he had worn in honour of 
the occasion. 

" It's a large field for speculation — any marriage," he 
said. " Perhaps this is a little extra large. But, then, 
they're both extra nice. I guess it will go." 

"You wouldn't say that — " began Beatrice, doubt- 
fully. 

" Yes, I would. There are a lot of things of that kind 
that I could say ; but there are answers to all of them. 
Yes," he repeated meditatively, after a moment, " all of 
them. You see they are interested in each other. They 
won't get tired of each other's conversation right away; 
and by the time they begin to — well, I shouldn't wonder 
if Dorothy were a little older." 

" Oh ! " gasped Mrs. Vertner, as if she had been sur- 
prised in a covert thought ; " do you think that, too, 
Ned?" 

"I have thought it; but only at moments. In the 
other moments — " 



454 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

"Well?" 

" I've thought that Phil might be something of a trial 
to a woman at any age." 

" I don't believe you think any such thing," declared 
his wife, promptly. " Why, there's something almost 
likable even about his faults." 

" Yes. Have you noticed that is what every one says ? 
I say it myself, and I stick to it. But hasn't it occurred 
to you that in some situations — like a wife's, for example 
— a man's faults can't be the perennial joy that they are 
to an impartial outsider like you, who doesn't have to 
breakfast with them?" 

" Oh, I know, Ned. But Philip is so good." 

" Ah, now you've hit it ! He's a good fellow : that's ex- 
actly what he is — the best. And if his need to be a good 
fellow sometimes makes him a good fellow at some one 
else's expense, why that's only what you mean by his faults 
being likable. If he has the sense to avoid being some 
time or other a good fellow at his wife's expense, — or 
what she will think her expense : that's the real trouble, — 
I don't see why she shouldn't continue to admire him for 
the manly and charming fellow he is, to the end of the 
chapter. She starts in with one great advantage : she is 
acquainted with him." 

"And with another," added the practical Beatrice: 
" that they are not to live with her father." 

" Yes ; that's almost the pleasantest thing about the 
marriage — that it sets her free of her father." He seated 
himself in the chair before the fire, where he sat in the 
evenings to read the Denver papers ; and, after piling on 
a couple of logs, stretched out his feet cozily to the crack- 
ling blaze. " I don't see any harm in his new field of 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 455 

labour being $60 or $70 to the eastward. I shouldn't be 
sorry to see the fare raised — if I could always be sure of a 
pass. I believe you'll see great changes in her : she will 
be just as nice, but differently nice. Come to think of it, 
she will have to be rather nice to be really worthy of Phil. 
That little piece of business of his at Pinon just before 
his father found him, and he went down to Colorado 
Springs to look her up, is the kind of thing that might 
help a woman to like him exclusively for his virtues — if 
she knew about it." 

" You mean his selling the ' Pay Ore ' to pay Jasper 
back $5,000 when he found that those Ryan people had 
opened a paying vein in his own mine ? Yes ; that was 
strong in him." 

" Strong ! Well, if you'd ever opened a true fissure 
vein that showed all the symptoms of making an income 
of $3,000 a month for you, for four or five years to come, 
and had sold your claim to raise ready money, you would 
think it strong. It's the sort of thing to make any one 
who ever owned a mine think Phil about right. When 
I remember that, I have to believe that if they are not 
happy, it will be her fault. Think of the rascal never 
having told her about it ! " 

" Oh, I shouldn't wonder if she had a good many 
things to learn." 

" About her father, yes. But she'll never learn them 
from him. And Maurice's being so far away will prevent 
the question from coming up, I hope, for her sake. Talk 
about aproposity," — this was one of Vertner's words, — 
" what do you say to Maurice's finding that position in 
New York ? I always said he had a manner. Now he's 
found a place where he can use it. To be assistant rector 



456 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

of a fashionable city congregation, where the people de- 
mand a certain distinction, and don't haggle too much 
about the salary they give for it, or the sincerity they 
get back for it, is a position in which Maurice can't help 
shining if he tries. A place like that, where too much 
earnestness would imply a criticism on the congregation, 
and be in a man's way, would have been a great thing for 
him if it had come to him younger ; he might never have 
found himself out. And even as it is (if he can keep the 
place — if this story doesn't rise to plague him), imagine 
his parish visits ! He will raise them to the dignity of a 
career. And how he will manage the music ! " 

" I don't care," said Beatrice, coming over and stand- 
ing near him by the fire, with her elbow on the mantel ; 
" I'm sorry for him. Did you see him this afternoon, 
after the service, when Dorothy said good-bye to him in 
the vestry? He really cares for her; I shall always say 
that for him." 

" Oh, don't tell me that he has his good points," re- 
torted Vertner, rising. "I'm his consistent admirer. 
Haven't I praised him since the first day I saw him ? I 
hope I know what is due to an editor who has had the 
discretion to relieve me of an inconvenient reputation, 
and doesn't mind leaving his money in the business." 

" I wish you'd give up that wretched paper, Ned." 

" Why, the Salvation Army people were around yester- 
day suggesting that very idea. I think I will." 

" Yes ; I suppose they are afraid of its influence," said 
Beatrice. 

Her husband stared at her for a moment; then he 
snatched her down upon his knee with a howl of de- 
light. 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 457 

" Yes ; that's it," he agreed. " They are frightened 
at the way I'm spreading churchly ideas among my two 
hundred and thirty-four subscribers. They want to buy 
me off." 

" No, but seriously, Ned ? " 

" Well, they want a paper of their own, under another 
name, and they see that the ' Kalendar ' has the plant and 
all that ready for them. They heard that I knew when I 
had had enough, and they made me an offer." 

" And you've accepted it ? " 

" Yes, at a loss of a hundred thousand dollars." 

" Absurd ! " 

" Didn't I expect to make that out of the paper when 
I started in ? " 

" I suppose so," admitted Beatrice, with a smile. 

"Well, then," challenged her husband. "And that 
isn't the only thing I've lost, either. I've lost my confi- 
dence in human nature. I supposed you could give people 
anything." 

" And can't you ? " 

" Not the ' Kalendar,' with the Eev. George Maurice 
as editor. Heigho ! I was sorry Deed was so cold to 
him." 

" Oh, I think he feels very sore about Mr. Maurice's 
connection with what Philip did — with that matter of 
Jasper's mine." 

" Don't call it Jasper's mine, please, Trix." 

" But what shall I call it ? It is his mine, isn't it ? " 

" Well, it's become so — by a fluke ; but it isn't ladylike 
to press the point." 

He regarded her with a quizzical smile, and Beatrice 
burst into a little rejoicing laugh. " You are trying to 



458 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

set me a standard for Dorothy's behaviour, I think," she 
said. 

" If she falls below the standard I shall punish you for 
it. I don't mind letting you know that. Well, I don't 
care," he declared warmly, after a moment ; " it would 
be mean to take a man back, and forgive him, hand- 
somely, and persuade him that there was a new deal and 
then to twit him at appropriate moments about the old 
hand, in the face of it." 

" Of course it would," assented Beatrice, with equal 
warmth ; " but Dorothy isn't like that." 

" No," returned Vertner, reflectively ; " women are, 
but probably Dorothy isn't. It's really a kind of gener- 
osity that has made her hard with him, when you come to 
think of it. I shouldn't wonder if she knew how to be at 
least as generous in forgiving as in condemning. I guess 
we can trust her. But it would be a temptation for 
some women — living next door to the subject of discus- 
sion." 

" Yes, yes, Ned ; but you will see. To Dorothy that 
mine in sight from her door will be like a sacred pledge — 
a guarantee, if you can think she needs one. His having 
done that — his having sold the mine to meet that debt to 
Jasper, and then having taken the position of superin- 
tendent in his own mine under the new owners — " 

" Yes ; it does rather force her to cast a benevolent 
eye on the ' Little Cipher ' as a part of the view from their 
cabin window. But it will make it embarrassing for Jas- 
per if he should want to look after the ' Little Cipher ' 
himself when the Ryans' lease is up, won't it ? " 

" Oh, Jasper ! " exclaimed Beatrice, impatiently ; " I 
don't care about Jasper !" She drew off her long white 



BENEFITS FORGOT. 459 

wedding-gloves, and, rising from his knee, began slowly 
to smooth them out upon the mantel. 

" Ah ! " exclaimed her husband from the window, 
"that's the limitation of your sex — your not caring about 
Jasper. You have to like people to be interested in them. 
Where's your miscellaneous human interest ? " he asked, 
turning upon her. 

" It isn't centred in Jasper," replied Beatrice, with a 
smile. 

" Do you mean to say that the spectacle of that suc- 
cessful young man's first defeat doesn't move you ? " 

" Oh, I enjoyed that on Mr. Deed's account." 

" I should hope you did ! If I were Deed, and had a 
friend who didn't enjoy that up to the hilt, I'd disown 
him. It was sublime." 

" It was effective," admitted Beatrice. 

" Effective ? It was a ten-strike. It bowled Jasper 
out. And it was the only thing that could have done 
it. At a casual glance — that is to say, at a fool glance 
— it looks weak. When you come to your senses you 
see how weak it was. If I had enough of that sort of 
weakness, I'd take a contract to twist the earth back- 
ward." 

" You needn't do that, Ned, to prove that Mr. Deed 
did the best and bravest thing. I'm ready enough to 
admit that anything that humiliates Jasper as much as 
that must have a good deal of some kind of force." 

" Ah, yes," cried Vertner, in sober joy ; " it did weary 
him, didn't it ? Taken with Dorothy's dismissal, it seems 
as if it might also save you the trouble of disliking him. 
My word for it, he is disliking himself." 

" And yet he has the ranch back ; he is to have it 



460 BENEFITS FORGOT. 

under his sole charge for the rest of the partnership 
term ; he has all that he has claimed." 

" Yes, yes," assented Vertner, heartily, with emphatic 
nods of his small, shrewd, blond head ; " that's just the 
pesky part of it. He was safe against every chance but 
that ; and if it had happened to be anybody but Deed, he 
would have been safer against that chance than any. But 
it did happen to be Deed, you see. Jasper had a perfect 
position. The incalculable has happened, and left him 
with no position at all. It makes the poor fellow feel 
foolish." 

" But I don't believe that was Mr. Deed's object." 

" No ; and that's the other pretty and excellent point 
about it. He has accomplished exactly what he has been 
after from the beginning, by giving it up and turning his 
back on it." 

" Yes ; I suppose he has won, as we should say. But 
now he doesn't seem to care. He seems to have got past 
that." 

" Ah," cried Vertner, as he seated himself in his chair 
before the fire, and held out his hands contentedly to the 
blaze, " that is winning. It's a good thing to win. But 
I shouldn't wonder if the best thing was not to need to 



THE END. 



M 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



ANY INVENTIONS. By Rudyard Kipling. 

Containing fourteen stories, several of which are now pub- 
lished for the first time, and two poems. i2mo, 427 pages. 
Cloth, $1.50. 

"The reader turns from its pages with the conviction that the author has no supe- 
rior to-day 'in animated narrative and virility of style. He remains master of a power 
in which none of his contemporaries approach him — the ability to select out of countless 
details the few vital ones which create the finished picture. He knows how, with a 
phrase or a word, to make you see his characters as he sees them, to make you feel 
the full meaning of a dramatic situation." — New York Tribune. 

"'Many Inventions' will confirm Mr. Kipling's reputation. . . . We would cite 
with pleasure sentences from almost every page, and extract incidents from almost 
every story. But to what end ? Here is the completest book that Mr. Kipling has yet 
given us in workmanship, the weightiest and most humane in breadth of view." — 
Pall Mall Gazette. 

" Mr. Kipling's powers as a story-teller are evidently not diminishing. We advise 
everybody to buy ' Many Inventions,' and to profit by some of the best entertainment 
that modern fiction has to offer." — New York Sun. 

" ' Many Inventions ' will be welcomed wherever the English language is spoken. 
. . . Every one of the stories bears the imprint of a master who conjures up incident 
as if by magic, and who portrays character, scenery, and feeling with an ease which is 
only exceeded by the boldness of force." — Boston Globe. 

"The book will get and hold the closest attention of the reader." — American 
Bookseller. 

" Mr. Rudyard Kipling's place in the world of letters is unique. He sits quite aloof 
and alone, the incomparable and inimitable master of the exquisitely fine art of short- 
story writing. Mr. Robert Louis Steveuson has perhaps written several tales which 
match the run of Mr. Kipling's work, but the best of Mr. Kipling's tales are matchless, 
and his latest collection, 'Many Inventions,' contains several such." — Philadelphia 
Press. 

"Of late essays in fiction the work of Kipling can be compared to only three — 
Blackmore's ' Lorn a Doone,' Stevenson's marvelous sketch of Villon in the 'New 
Arabian Nights,' and Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles.' . . . It is probably 
owing to this extreme care that ' Many Inventions ' is undoubtedly Mr. Kipling's best 
book." — Chicago Post. 

" Mr. Kipling's style 16 too well known to American readers to require introduction, 
but it can scarcely be amiss to say there is not a story in this collection that does not 
more than repay a perusal of them all." — Baltimore American. 

" As a writer of short stories Rudyard Kipling is a genius. He has had imitators, 
but they have not been successful in dimming the luster of his achievements by con- 
trast. . . . 'Many Inventions' is the title. And they are inventions— entirely origi- 
nal in incident, ingenious in plot, and startling by their boldness and force." — Rochester 
Herald. 

" How clever he is ! This must always be the first thought on reading such a 
collection of Kipling's stories. Here is art— art of the most consummate sort. Com- 
pared with this, the stories of our brightest young writers become commonplace."— 

New York Evangelist. 

" Taking the group as a whole, it may be said that the execution is up to his best 
in the past, while two or three sketches surpass in rounded strength and vividness of 
imagination anything else he has done." — Hartford Courant. 

"Fifteen more extraordinary sketches, without a tinge of sensationalism, it would 
be hard^ to find. . . . Every one has an individuality of its own which fascinates tha 
reader." — Boston Times. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



T 



A 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



Books by Sara Jeannette Duncan. 

HE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEM SA- 
HIB. By Sara Jeannette Duncan. With 37 Illustrations 
by F. H. Townsend. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

"It is impossible for Sara Jeannette Duncan to be otherwise than interesting. 
Whether it be a voyage around the world, or an American girl's experiences in Lon- 
don society, or the adventures pertaining to the establishment of a youthful couple in 
India, there is always an atmosphere, a quality, a charm peculiarly her own." — Brook- 
lyn Standard-Union. 

" It is like traveling without leaving one's armchair to read it. Miss Duncan has 
the descriptive and narrative gift in large measure, and she brings vividly before us 
the street scenes, the interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the 
English colony." — Philadelphia Telegraph. 

" Another witty and delightful book." — Philadelphia Times. 

SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I 

Went Round the World by Ourselves. By Sara Jeannette 
Duncan. With in Illustrations by F. H. Townsend. i2mo. 
Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.75. 

"Widely read and praised on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, with scores of 
illustrations which fit the text exactly and show the mind of artist and writer in unison." 
— New York livening Post. 

" It is to be doubted whether another book can be found so thoroughly amusing 
from beginning to end." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

" For sparkling wit, irresistibly contagious fun, keen observation, absolutely poetic 
appreciation of natural beauty, and vivid descriptiveness, it has no recent rival " — Mrs. 
P. T. Barnum's Letter to the New York Tribune. 

"A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed, difficult to 
find." — St. Louis Republic. 

N AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON. By Sara 
Jeannette Duncan. With 80 Illustrations by F. H. Town- 
send. i2mo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.50. 

" One of the most naive and entertaining books of the season." — New York Ob- 
server. 

" The raciness and breeziness which made ' A Social Departure,' by the same 
author, last season, the best-read and most-talked-of book of travel for many a year, 
permeate the new book, and appear between the lines of every page." — Brooklyn 
Standard- Union. 

" So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an American, has 
never before been written." — Philadelphia Bulletin. 

"Overrunning with cleverness and good-will." — New York Commercial Adver- 
tiser. 

" We shall not interfere with the reader's privilege to find out for herself what, after 
her presentation at court and narrow escape from Cupid's meshes in England, becomes 
of the American girl who is the gay theme of the book. Sure we are that no one who 
takes up the volume — which, by the way, is cunningly illustrated — will lay it down 
until his or her mind is at rest on this point." — Toronto Mail. 



A 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



^P 



